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Sec /ion 


Number. 


The  Johannean  Problem 


A  RESUME  FOR  ENGLISH 
READERS 


BY  REV.  GEORGE  W.^GILMORE,  A.M. 

PROFESSOR    OF    ENGLISH     BIBLICAL    EXEGESLS    AND    CRITICISM 
IN    BANGOR   THEOLOGICAL   SEMINARY 


Philadelphia 

Prbsbyterian  Board  of  Publication 
AND  Sabbath-school  Work 

1895 


Copyright,  1895,  by 
THE  TRUSTEES   OF    THE   PRESBYTERIAN   BOARD 
OF   PUBLICATION  AND  SABBATH- 
SCHOOL  WORK. 


TO   THE 

REV.  J.  D.  WELLS,  D.D., 

PASTOR    OF    THE 

SOUTH    THIRD    STREET    PRESBYTERIAN    CHURCH, 

BROOKLYN,   N.   Y., 

WISE  COUNSELOR,  FAITHFUL    PASTOR,   DEVOTED  FRIEND, 

THIS    BOOK    IS    DEDICATED. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


Page. 

Chap.          I.     Introduction 9 

Chap.        II.     Adverse  Criticism 14 

Chap.      III.     The  Antiquity  of    the  Fourth  Gospel.     External 

Testimony,  180-200  A.D 18 

Chap.       IV.     Antiquity  (continued).  External  Testimony,  mostly 

prior  to  180  A.D 26 

Chap.         V.     Antiquity  (continued).     Justin  Martyr 36 

Chap.       VI.     Antiquity  (continued).     Heretical  Sects 45 

Chap.      VII.     Antiquity   (continued).     The   Alogi  and   the    Ap- 
pendix to  the  Gospel 57 

Chap.    VIII.     The  Author.     External  Evidence 62 

Chap.       IX.     Antiquity.     Internal  Evidence 69 

Chap.         X.     The  Author.     Internal  Evidence 73 

Chap.       XL     Objections  Answered 98 

Bibliography 108 

Index 117 


PREFACE. 


This  little  book  is  not  an  Introduction  to  the  Fourth 
Gospel.  It  deals  exclusively  with  the  antiquity  and 
authorship  of  that  book,  and  from  an  affirmative  stand- 
point. Even  this  it  does  not  profess  to  treat  exhaustively. 
Such  a  course  was  impossible  if  the  author's  aim  was  fol- 
lowed.    What  that  aim  was  will  appear  a  little  later. 

The  book  grew  out  of  the  author's  investigations  made 
with  the  object  of  satisfying  himself  what  conclusion  the 
evidence  for  and  against  the  Johannean  authorship  of  the  last 
gospel  warranted  and  demanded.  As  soon  as  study  of  the 
subject  began,  the  author  was  almost  appalled  at  the  vol- 
ume of  literature  treating  the  ''Johannean  Problem." 
In  English,  French,  and  especially  German,  the  treatises 
ran  into  scores,  while  articles  almost  innumerable,  bearing 
on  particular  phases  of  the  question,  were  found  in  the 
pages  of  the  various  journals  and  reviews. 

The  writer  read  nearly  everything  of  importance  that 
could  assist  him  in  reaching  a  conclusion  concerning  the 
evidence.  He  gave  prolonged  study  to  the  Gospel  itself. 
And  as  he  read  and  studied,  as  he  noted  the  abandon- 
ment of  position  after  position  held  by  adverse  critics, 
the  conclusion  grew  that  no  hypothesis  which  excluded 
the  apostle  John  from  the  authorship  satisfied  the  condi- 
tions and  accorded  with  the  testimony. 

But  to  reach  this  conclusion   intelligently,   to  get  the 

7 


8  PREFACE. 

testimony  before  him,  the  writer  had  gone  through  a 
mass  of  material.  He  had  taken  voluminous  notes,  had 
arranged  the  evidence,  culled  from  many  authors,  gath- 
ered from  numerous  sources.  When  his  mind  was  made 
up,  it  occurred  to  him  that  a  presentation  of  the  weightiest 
evidence,  the  most  decisive  indications,  might  be  of  ser- 
vice to  many  who  have  not  time  to  wade  through  the 
flood  of  literature  on  the  subject ;  and  that  this  might  be 
done  in  a  little  book  which  could  be  bought  by  many  who 
could  not  afford,  say,  the  single  volume  even  of  Watkins' 
Bampton  Lectm'es. 

In  acknowledgment  of  indebtedness  the  author  is  at 
loss  where  to  begin,  where  to  end.  He  read  and  re-read  so 
frequently,  that  perhaps  what  was  really  another's  seemed 
his  own.  Wherever  he  has  consciously  taken  from  an 
author,  he  has  attempted  to  give  credit  in  the  body  of  the 
book.  The  writings  of  Godet,  Luthardt,  Schurer,  West- 
cott,  Sanday,  Lightfoot,  Ezra  Abbot,  E.  A.  Abbott, 
James  Drummond,  Matthew  Arnold,  Renan,  Strauss,  De 
Wette,  Weizsacker,  Salmon,  Weiss,  Beyschlag,  Harnack, 
Zahn  and  others,  have  been  made  tributary.  The  chapter 
on  Justin  Martyr  is,  of  course,  drawn  from  Dr.  Ezra 
Abbot's  masterly  examination  of  that  father.  Next  to 
Dr.  Abbot,  Dr.  Sanday  and  Bishop  Lightfoot  have  been 
most  helpful.  To  all  who  have  helped  the  author,  he  is 
most  grateful. 

Special  thanks  are  tendered  the  Rev.  E.  R.  Craven, 
D.D.,  and  the  Rev.  J.  R.  Miller,  D.D.,  of  the  Presby- 
terian Board  of  Publication. 

Bangor,  Me.,  September,  1895. 


CHAPTER  1. 
Introduction. 

New  Testament  ^^    '''^    ^''''^^^    ^^'^    Pentateuch,    no 

Critical  Problems.  ^^^^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^it.le  have  been  more 
the  object  of  study  and  "the  subject  of 
controversy  than  the  four  gospels.  This  discussion  of  the 
gospels  has  resolved  itself  into  two  lines  of  investigation, 
with  mutual  relations,  and  yet   really  distinct  each  from 

the  other.     The  first  is  the  so-called 
The 
Synoptic  Problem.     "Synoptic     Problem"     concerning 

itself  with  the  first  three  gospels,  de- 
bating their  common  relationship  and  their  origin.  Curi- 
ously enough,  the  fight  over  the  synoptic  problem  has  not 
centred  in  the  authorship  of  these  books,  and  compara- 
tively little  has  been  said  concerning  their  antiquity,  al- 
though some  skirmishes  have  been  fought  on  that  issue 
also.     The  second  critical  inquiry  concerning  the  gospels, 

which  is  at  present  the  central  ob- 
The  •  r  1  1 

Johannean  Problem.      J^^^  °^  ^^^^^^   ^^"'^    defense,   is  the 

"Johannean  Problem."  There  is 
a  ''Johannean  Problem"  in  a  wider  sense  than  the  one 
usually  signified  by  that  phrase,  which  includes  the  com- 
mon relationship  of  the  Apocalypse,  the  three  epistles  of 
John,  and  the  fourth  gospel.  But  the  Johannean  problem 
proper  has  to  do  with  the  antiquity  and  authorship  of  the 

9 


lO  TPIE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

fourth  gospel  only.  It  is  the  Johannean  problem  in  this 
limited  sense  with  which  we  are  concerned.  We  shall 
find,  a3  we  proceed,  that  there  are  certain  subsidiary  ques- 
tions which  have  to  be  considered  and  answered,  but  the 
central  question  is  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  gospel  com- 
monly called  ''According  to  St.  John." 

From    the   time   of   the   composition 
of  the  Case  ^^  ^^^^  gospel  until  the  last   quarter   of 

the  eighteenth  century,  the  all  but 
universal  declaration  of  the  Church  credited  the  composi- 
tion of  this  gospel  to  John,  the  brother  of  James,  most 
likely  the  youngest  of  the  Lord's  disciples.     The  solitary 

exception  to  this  ascription  comes 
The  Alogi.  -  •  ,  ,        ^,        , 

from    a    party     m     the     early     Church 

which  existed  probably  in  the  time  of  Irenaeus  (r.  130- 
202  A.D.).  We  have  a  reference  to  almost  certainly  the 
same  party  in  a  writing  of  Epiphanius  {c.  320-403  A.D.), 
in  which  he  calls  them  ''Alogi"  [from  "a"  and  "Lo- 
gos"], meaning  that  they  rejected  the  *'  Logos  "  doctrine 
of  the  fourth  gospel.  Because  that  party  found  this  gos- 
pel opposed  to  their  own  theories,  they  denied  its  apostol- 
icity.  This  is  the  sole  exception  to  the  otherwise  univer- 
sal testimony  to  the  Johannean  authorship  of  our  gospel. 
Lest  this  exception  should  at  the  outset,  because  of  its 
antiquity,  cause  a  prejudice  against  the  gospel,  three 
things  should  be  said:  (i)  while  we  have  called  those 
who  maintained  that  opinion  "a  party,"  we  have  really 
in  so  doing  misrepresented  them,  as  the  probability  is 
that  those  who  so  held  were  simply  scattering  individuals 
in  various  churches,  the  number  of  whom  never  reached 
the  dignity  of  a  sect  or  a  party;  (2)  these  persons  had  a 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  II 

motive  for  holding  such  opinions  in  their  desire  to  dis- 
credit a  book  which,  if  received  as  apostolic,  would  leave 
them  no  ground  for  their  own  heretical  notions;  (3) 
parallels  to  their  course  can  be  found  in  the  present 
times,  e.  g.,  a.  commentator  on  the  epistle  to  the  Romans, 
who  was  for  many  years  professor  in  theological  semina- 
ries and  the  author  of  a  system  of  dogmatic  theology,  has 
^^  for  dogmatic  reasons,''  deliberately  rejected  the  reading 
of  the  best  manuscripts  in  favor  of  a  text  not  so  well  sub- 
stantiated. 

It   is    our  purpose   to  summarize   the 
Preliminary  .  ,  r         .i  •  r      •, 

Observations.        evidence    for    the    genuineness   of    the 

fourth  gospel  so  far  as  ascertained  at 
the  present  time.  We  must  understand,  however,  that  as 
all  the  gospels  are  anonymous,  and  as  we  owe  to  tradition 

all    that  we   know   of    their  authorship, 

Mathematical        niathematical  proof    is    not    to    be    ob- 

Proof  not  .  * 

Obtainable.  tained,   and    that   the   best   we   can    do 

is  to  show  that  the  testimony  points, 
with  a  very  high  degree  of  probability,  to  John  the  apostle 
as  the  autlior.  It  will  be  shown  that  the  date  of  its  com- 
position can  be  pushed  so  far  back  that  it  is  unlikely,  if 
not  impossible,  that  the  gospel  could  have  been  written 
by  any  other  than  the  beloved  disciple. 

A  principle  to  be  applied  in  investigations  of  the  sort 
we  are  making  is  that  a  well-supported  tradition  in  favor 
of  a  certain  book's  authenticity  and  genuineness  stands  un- 
til it  is  disproved.      To  suggest  doubts 
Favorable  1  •   i  .  •  • 

Presumption.         '^vhich  rest  upon  conjecture    is   not   suf- 
ficient    to     invalidate     that     tradition ; 
proven  facts  not  consonant  with  it  alone  can  make  it  a  just 


12  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

object  of  suspicion.  ^^The  presumption  is  in  favor  of 
that  which  exists. ' ' 

Another  principle  we  are  to  remember  is  that  negative 

evidence  is  always  to  be  received  with  caution.     It  is  not 

enough  to  allege  against  the  existence 

ega  ive    vi  ence     ^^  ^  certain  book  at  a  given  time  that 
Inconclusive.  ° 

an  author  or  a  number  of  authors  did 

not  quote  it,  unless  it  be  proved  that  he  or  they  (i)  were 
in  the  habit  of  quoting  other  books  of  like  tenor,  and  (2) 
needed  to  cite  the  book  under  discussion  in  order  to  treat 
the  subject  he  was  or  they  were  dealing  with.  In  like 
manner  scantiness  of  evidence  in  a  certain  period  must  be 
put  alongside  of  the  scantiness  of  the  literary  remains 
which  have  come  down  to  us.  Many  of  the  most  volu- 
minous Christian  and  heretical  writings,  which  were  writ- 
ten between  100  and  180  A.D.,  have  been  lost.  We  have, 
however,  to  note  that  what  literature  we  have  is  in  particu- 
larly close  relationship  with  the  Apostle  John.  Besides 
this,  the  negative  argument  is  a  most  precarious  one, 
as  Dr.  Sanday  has  clearly  shown  that  Justin  Martyr  uses 
at  most  one  Pauline  epistle  at  the  time  when  Marcion  con- 
cedes ten.  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  point  out  that 
citations  used  to  prove  quotations  from  the  fourth  gospel 
must  be  such  as  cannot  be  referred  to  the  other  three. 

Yet  one  remark  remains  to  be  made. 
Disagreement  ^^^.^  ^^^  opponents  of  the  genuine- 
of  Opponents.  ^  ,  i     •        ^1     • 

ness    of    our    gospel    agreed    m     their 

conclusions,  if  there  were  even  a  substantial  concord  in 
their  results,  the  case  would  be  a  most  difficult  one  to 
defend.  But  we  find  that  some  deny  both  the  genuine- 
ness and  the  historicity  of  the  gospel  j  others  defend  the 


THE   JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM.  13 

genuineness  but  deny  the  historicity  and  vice  versa  ;  still 
others  hold  the  discourses  to  be  genuine  but  the  narra- 
tive fabricated,  and  some  are  found  who  defend  the  narra- 
tive while  affirming  that  the  discourses  are  imaginary  and 
invented.  A  like  disagreement  of  the  critics  is  shown  in 
their  theories  of  the  partition  of  the  gospel,  some  hold- 
ing that  the  discourses  are  Johannine,  and  the  narrative 
by  a  later  hand  ;  others  declaring  that  parts  of  the  dis- 
courses are  by  John,  though  by  no  means  agreeing  among 
themselves  in  the  location  of  the  joinings. 

The  conclusion  evidently  to  be  reached  from  this  lack 
of  a  consensus  among  the  opponents  is  that  the  marks  on 
which  critics  rely  as  a  basis  for  their  theories  are  either 
imaginary,  or  so  faint  that  they  cannot  be  detected  even 
after  being  pointed  out.  May  we  not  also  infer  that  any 
theory  wliich  excludes  the  apostle  John  from  the  author- 
ship of  the  gospel  is  so  beset  with  difficulties  that  the 
hypothesis  of  his  authorship  alone  satisfies  the  conditions 
and  gives  rest  ? 


CHAPTER  II. 

Adverse  Criticism. 

We  have  said  that  until  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury there  was  only  one   protest  to  die 
Modern  Criticism.         .         .  .  \  /    ,  ^     , 

otherwise  universal  ascription  of   the 

fourth  gospel  to  John.  The  modern  period  of  criti- 
cism upon  that  gospel  dates  from  the  end  of  the  last 
century  among  the  Deists  of  England  and  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  Illumination  in  Germany.  But  from 
this  attack  no  disquiet,  no  effect  worth  noting,  resulted. 

In     1830,    Bretschneider    published,    in 
Bretschneider.        _,  .,  ^         r^     ,    .  .,.  . 

Germany,  a  book    on    the    Probabilities 

Concerm?ig  the  Genius  and  Origin  of  the  Gospel  and 
Epistles  of  John,  which  attracted  considerable  atten- 
tion. At  that  time  Schleiermacher  was  at  the  height 
of  his  fame,  and  as  he  threw  the  whole  weight  of  his 
influence  against  the  critical  hypothesis,  a  cohort  of 
lesser  lights  meeting  Bretschneider  with  a  deluge  of  op- 
position, Bretschneider  himself  was  staggered,  and  ''sub- 
sequently withdrew  his  opinion."  The  attack  was  re- 
newed  twenty-four  years  later,  when  the  founder 
of  the  so-called  '' Tiibingen  School,"  Ferdi- 
nand Christian  Baur,  in  a  German  publication,  and,  in 
1847,  ii"^  ^"^is  Critical  Investigations  Concer7iing  the  Can- 
onical Gospels,  published  his  conclusions  concerning  the 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  1$ 

object  of  the  writing,  from  which  the  inference  was  imme- 
diate, that  our  gospel  could  not  have  been  written  by  an 
apostle.  Indeed  he  affirmed  that  it  "could  not  have 
arisen  earlier  than  the  second  half  of  the  first  century." 
According  to  him  all  deviations  from  the  synoptic  narra- 
tive were  the  product  of  the  imagination,  subordinated  to 
the  polemic  plan  of  the  writer.  The  apostolicity  and  his- 
toricity was  from  that  time  up  to  1867  defended  with  more 
or  less  thoroughness  by  a  host  of  writers,  many  of  them, 
however,  making  substantial  concessions  to  the  critical 
or  adverse  school  concerning  tlic  subjectivity  or  ideal 
character  of  the  discourses.  The  next  work  of  note, 
marking  a  retreat  in  the  date  claimed  for  the  compo- 
sition, yet  still  denying  the  Johannean  authorship,  was 
by  Keim,  The  History  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  1867-72. 
In  England  the  only  opponents  of  prom- 
inence, who  assail  the  genuineness  of  the  gos- 
pel, are  Tayler,  the  author  of  Supernatural  Religion,  and 
Samuel  Davidson,  in  his  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the 
Ne7v  Testament. 

The  earlier   method  of  assault  was 

Basis  of  Adverse  ,  ^  ^i     ^   *i      r       ».i 

_  .  .  .  an  endeavor  to  prove  that  the  fourth 

Criticism.  ^ 

gospel  was  what  the  Germans  call  a 
"  tendency  writing,"  that  it  was  composed  to  combat 
certain  unhappy  trends  of  doctrine  and  incipient  here- 
sies existing  in  the  form  which  the  gospel  combats  not 
until  the  second  century,  and  that  therefore  the  date 
of  the  gospel  has  to  be  put  so  far  into  the  second  cen- 
tury that  its  composition  by  an  apostle  is  an  impossibility. 
There  are  thus  two  lines  of  attack  ;  first,  the  autlien- 
ticity  or  historicity ;  second,  and  as  a  result  of  the   first. 


l6  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

the  genuineness  or  authorship.  The  later  basis  of  adverse 
criticism  is  found,  first,  in  a  comparison  of  the  fourth  gos- 
pel with  the  other  three.  The  synoptic  gospels  are  so 
named  because  they  present  the  same  view  of  the  person 
and  character  of  Christ,  represent  him  as  moving  chiefly 
in  Galilee,  accord  quite  closely  in  the  discourses  attributed 
to  him,  and  hence  present,  on  the  whole,  a  concordant  and 
harmonious  picture  of  himself  and  his  ministry.  Now,  it 
is  claimed,  that  the  fourth  gospel  differs  from  the  first 
three  in  several  important  respects,  i.  The  scene  of  our 
Lord's  activity  is  different;  in  the  synoptics  he  moves 
principally  in  Galilee;  in  John  the  scene  of  his  activity  is 
Judea.  2.  The  time-marks  are  different :  the  synoptics 
imply  a  ministry  lasting  only  one  year ;  John  notes  at 
least  three  passovers,  hence  a  ministry  of  nearly  three 
years.  3.  The  events,  miracles,  etc.,  are  different.  4. 
The  discourses  of  Christ,  as  given  by  the  synoptists  and 
John,  are  entirely  dissimilar,  varying  in  (a)  substance  and 
(b)  style.  Really  included  in  the  above  summary  of 
differences,  but  so  important  as  to  demand  special  atten- 
tion, are  four  items  of  special  interest,  (i)  There  is  a  dis- 
crepancy between  the  first  three  gospels  and  the  fourth 
regarding  the  day  of  our  Lord's  death.  (2)  Another 
difference  is  found  in  the  hou7^s  of  that  day.  (3)  The 
Johannean  narrative  lacks  a  progression  of  historical  nar- 
rative particularly  as  to  the  affirmation  of  the  Messiah- 
ship  of  Jesus.  (4)  Along  with  this  last  '*  goes  a  general 
heightening  of  his  claims." 

It  will  be  noticed  that  these  assaults  proceed  from  an 
examination  of  the  gospel  itself.  There  is  still  another 
basis  of  attack  which  is  found  in  an  affirmed  lack  of  early 


THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM.  I? 

testimony  from  writers  of  the  second  century.  We  have 
here,  then,  two  general  lines  of  assault,  internal  and 
external ;  the  testimony  of  the  gospel  to  itself  is  im- 
pugned, and  the  testimony  of  others  is  said  to  be  defi- 
cient.    These  two  linos  are  met   by  the  defenders  of  the 

gospel  in  exactly  the  same  way.     The 
Lines  of  Defense.  .  ,  ^        ,  ,    .  i    i    j 

evidence  for  the  gospel  is  marshaled, 

first,  to  prove  the  antiquity  of  the  gospel  by  external  wit- 
ness ;  second,  to  show  that  external  testimony  abounds, 
which  indicates  John  as  the  author;  and  third,  that  the 
gospel  itself  strongly  corroborates  this  testimony,  and, 
indeed,  excludes  any  other  person  from  its  authorship. 
We  shall  pursue  this  method  in  presenting  the  evidence 
so  far  as  at  present  known. 

Let  it  be  remembered  that  Baur  placed  the  composition 
of  the  gospel  at  160-170  A.D.;  that  Keim  pushed  it  back 
to  c.  no  A.D.,  afterwards  withdrawing  this  admission, 
when  he  saw  that  such  a  date  was  inconsistent  with  his 
other  positions  which  could  not  then  be  maintained,  and 
placing  it  at  about  130  A.D. 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  Antiquity  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 

External  Testimony,  180-200  A.D. 

From  the  time  of  Irenseus,  bishop 
External  Evidence,  ^f  Lyons,  we  are  on  thoroughly  firm 
174-189  A  D  footing   SO   far  as  external  testimony 

to  our  gospel  is  concerned.  This 
bishop,  in  the  third  book  of  his  treatise.  Against  Heresies, 
quotes  abundantly  from  the  fourth  gospel.  He  shows,  by 
quotations  which  are  exact  in  their  agreement  with  the 
gospel  text,  that  he  had  that  text  before  him,  and  in  about 
the  shape,  so  far  as  his  quotations  go,  in  which  we  now 
have  it.  For  instance,  in  Chap,  xi,  he  says:  "John  the 
disciple  of  the  Lord  ....  thus  commenced  his  teaching 
in  the  gospel :  '  In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the 
Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God.  The  same 
was  in  the  beginning  with  God.  All  things  were  made 
by  him,  and  without  him  was  nothing  made.  What  was 
made  was  life  in  him,  and  the  life  was  the  light  of  men. 
And  the  light  shineth  in  darkness,  and  the  darkness  com- 
prehended it  not.'  " 

This  is  a  clear  and  unmistakable  quotation  from  the  pro- 
logue of  John's  gospel.  Again,  in  Chap,  xiv,  we  find  : 
"And  again,  the  Lord  replied  to  Philip,  who  wished  to 


THE  JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  I9 

behold  the  Father,  '  Have  I  been  so  long  a  time  with 
you,  and  yet  thou  hast  not  known  me,  Philip  ?  He  that 
sees  me,  sees  also  the  Father;  and  how  saycst  thou  then. 
Show  us  the  Father?  For  I  am  in  the  Father  and  the 
Father  in  me ;  and  henceforth  ye  know  him  and  have 
seen  him.'  "  This  is  clearly  a  quotation,  with  a  change 
of  tense,  from  John  xiv.  7,  9,  10.  Not  to  multiply  quo- 
tations, we  need  mention  only  that  Tischendorf  says  that 
Irenceus  quotes  Jolin's  gospel  eighty  times.     But  not  only 

docs  Irenajus  show  by  quoting    that   he 
Ireneeus'  four  r      -a-  -.i  ^        1  ^ 

was   familiar  with    our   gospel ;    he    also 

goes  on   to   give    certain   mystic   reasons 

why  there  should   be  just  /our  gospels,  no  more  and  no 

less. 

After  a  most  exacting  criticism,  scrutinizing  all  that  he 
has  said  on  this  topic,  no  other  conclusion  is  possible  than 
that  his  four  gospels  are  those  which  we  now  have.  He  so 
characterizes  the  gospels,  giving  the  salient  features  of 
each  and  calling  them  by  the  names  they  now  bear,  that 
no  other  identification  is  possible.  So  that  so  far  as  the 
gospels  were  concerned,  in  his  time,  the  canon  was  closed. 
If  our  gospel  had  made  its  appearance  only  in  160-170 
A.D.  (Baur),  could  it  have  become  so  firmly  estab- 
lished by  180  A.D.  as  to  merit  the  place  it  has  in  Irena^us? 

From  another  quarter  of  the   world,  only  a  very  little 
later  than  Irenaeus,  we  have  unequivocal  testimony,  evinc- 
ing the  catholicity  of  the  acceptance 
Clement  of  ^  1     ^  .i  j       r     1 

Alexandria.  ^^  °"^   S^^P^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^"^    ^^    the  sec- 

fl.  190-203  A.D.       ond  century.     Clement  of  Alexandria 
adds  his  confirmation  to  the  existence 
of  the  fourth  gospel.     He  tells  the  order  in  which  the  gos- 


20  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

pels  were  composed,  deriving  his  information  from  ''  the 
oldest  Presbyters."  The  gospels  which  contain  the  gene- 
alogies were  written  first,  then  Mark;  ''But  John,  last  of 
all,  perceiving  that  what  had  reference  to  the  body  in  the 
gospel  of  our  Saviour,  was  sufficiently  detailed,  and  being 
encouraged  by  his  familiar  friends,  and  urged  by  the 
Spirit,  wrote  a  spiritual  gospel  "  (see  Eusebius,  Hist. 
EccL,  vi,  14).  His  employment  of  the  Johannean  gospel 
is  undisputed,  while  it  is  noticeable  that  John  i.  3  runs 
through  his  works  almost  like  a  refrain  in  a  Hebrew 
psalm.  We  need  cite  only  a  few  passages  to  show  his  use 
of  our  book.  In  Stromafa,  iii,  12,  he  quotes  John  vi.  27  : 
*' Labor  not  for  the  meat  which  perisheth,  but  for  that 
which  abideth  unto  life  eternal."  In  Siro7iiata,  v,  3,  he  re- 
marks :  ''Now  the  word  of  God  says,  'I  am  the  truth' 
(John  xiv.  6),"  and  he  constantly  refers  to  our  Lord  as 
"the  Word."  Again  in  the  same  work  he  has  undoubt- 
edly John  iii.  30  before  him,  for  he  writes:  "  'I  must 
decrease,'  said  the  prophet  John  [the  Baptist],  and  the 
Word  of  the  Lord  alone,  in  which  the  law  terminates, 
'increase.'  "  These  are  but  a  few  of  the  scores  of  quota- 
tions this  father  furnishes  from  the  Johannean  gospel. 

Our    next    witness     is    earlier     than 

eop  ilus  of      those  we  have  mentioned,  and  it  will  be 
Antiocli,  .      ,     ,  .  ,1 

115-188  A  D  noticed  that  our  testimony  may   be  de- 

scribed as  coming  from  points  on  the 
arc  of  a  circle,  the  centre  of  which  is  Rome.  This 
writer  furnishes  a  very  suggestive  example  of  the  pe- 
culiar difficulties  which  the  defenders  of  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  fourth  gospel  have  to  meet,  which  will  be 
illustrated  still   further  as  we  proceed  in  our  discussion. 


THE    JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  21 

Theophilus  of  Antioch,  in  Syria,  is  supposed  to  have 
been  born  about  115  A.D.  The  date  of  his  death  is  vari- 
ously placed  at  i8i  and  i88  A.D.  The  undisputed  book 
of  his,  which  we  have,  is  a  treatise  called  To  Autolycus, 
written  not  much  later  than  177  A.D.,  perhaps  about  180. 
Another  work  supposed  to  be  by  him,  a  Commentary  on 
the  Gospels,  is  still  under  discussion,  and  as  the  matter  is 
not  yet  settled,  we  are  not  entitled  to  quote  it.  If  it  be 
by  Theophilus,  it  is  probably  earlier  than  the  Ad  Autoly- 
cum.  In  the  unquestioned  work  by  this  writer  there  are 
several  references  which  look  as  though  they  were  from 
our  gospel,  but  as  they  have  affinities  with  other  passages 
in  the  New  Testament  and  other  writings,  the  opponents 
have  strenuously  denied  that  they  show  any  dependence 
on  John. 

We   are  in    this    matter    brought  face    to 

„  face    with    that    fact    which,    as    we    have 

Passag-es.  .        ,  '     _ 

said,  is  exceedingly  embarrassing  to  those 
who  defend  Johannean  authorship,  viz.,  that  early  writers 
are  often  inexact  in  their  quotations,  frequently  giv- 
ing the  idea  but  not  the  very  words  of  the  sacred 
text.  Thus  Bk.  i,  13,  ''A  seed  of  wheat,  for  example, 
or  of  the  other  grains,  when  it  is  cast  into  the  earth, 
first  dies  and  rots  away,  then  is  raised,  and  becomes  a 
stalk  of  corn,"  reminds  us  of  John  xii.  24,  and  also  of 
I  Cor.  XV.  36,  with  both  of  which  it  has  affinity,  though 
it  comes  closer  to  the  passage  from  the  gospel.  ''The 
next  chapter  opens,"  says  Watkins  (Bampton  Lectures, 
p.  30),  "with  the  words,  'Be  not  therefore  without 
faith,  but  have  faith,'  which  at  once  remind  us  of,  though 
they  are   not   quite  identical  with,  our   Lord's  words  to 


22  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

S.  Thomas:    'Be  not  faithless,    but  believing.'"     Other 

passages  might  be    adduced  in  which 

..  ^.^*°^^^^°^'  the  unprejudiced  reader  would  see  at 

n,  24,  c.  171  A.D.  \     ^     ^  ,       , 

once    the  reference  to  the  last  of  the 

gospels,  but  they  are  disputed  by  the  opponents.  Fortu- 
nately we  have  in  Bk.  ii,  Chap.  22,  so  clear  a  quotation 
that  it  cannot  be  explained  away.  The  passage  is  as 
follows:  ''And  hence  the  holy  writings  teach  us,  and 
all  the  Spirit-bearing  men,  one  of  whom,  John,  says, 
'  In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the  Word  was 
with  God,'  showing  that  at  first  God  was  alone  and  the 
Word  in  him.  Then  he  says,  '  The  word  was  God ; 
all  things  came  into  existence  through  him;  and  apart 
from  him  not  one  thing  came  into  existence.'  "  Were 
it  not  for  this  quotation  so  decisive  of  the  use  of  the 
fourth  gospel  by  Theophilus,  all  knowledge  of  that  book 
would  have  been  denied  him  by  the  assailants  of  its 
genuineness.  This  brings  us  to  a  principle  that  should 
be  enunciated  here,  viz.,  that  when  once  in  a  given  com- 
position a  clear  quotation  from  a  disputed  book  has 
been  found,  there  is  an  increase  in  the  probability  that 
many  other  passages  in  that  writing  seeming  to  refer  to 
that  book  really  do  so  refer,  and  hence  a  gain  in  evi- 
dential value  results;  and  the  more  there  are  of  these 
passages,  the  more  strongly  corroborative  and  cumula- 
tive do  they  become.  We  shall  have  occasion  to  speak 
of  this  again  when  we  come  to  deal  with  the  Clementine 
Homilies,  to  which  it  especially  applies.  Meanwhile 
in  the  case  of  Theophilus  the  application  of  the  principle 
is  of  no  little  value. 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  23 

The      Clementine      Homilies,      to 

Clementine  u-   u  u    ^-       4.  *<.      t* 

which  we  next   direct  our  attention, 
Homilies  ;    date  ? 

is  a  case  in  point.  The  story  of  the 
array  of  tlie  Clementines  against  the  assailants  of  our 
gospel  is  an  interesting  and  instructive  one.  During  the 
heyday  of  the  Tiibingen  School  it  was  strongly  main- 
tained that  in  this  work  there  was  no  sign  of  dependence 
upon  the  fourth  gospel.  In  fact,  in  1853,  Zeller  asserted 
that  one  would  seek  in  vain  in  the  Clementines  for  indi- 
cations of  that  book.  It  happened  that  the  manuscripts 
on  whicii  the  printed  editions  were  based  were  defective, 
breaking  off  in  the  middle  of  Chap,  xiv  of  Bk.  xix.  Thus 
one  whole  book  and  part  of  another  were  missing.  In  the 
part  then  known  were  several  references  which  were 
claimed  by  the  defenders  of  the  Johannean  authorship, 
but  iheir  opponents  refused  to  allow  the  claim.  The  late 
Prof.  Lagarde  cited  fifteen  instances  of  quotation  from  or 
reference  to  St.  John.  Others  might  be  given.  In  1837, 
Dr.  Dressel  found  in  the  Ottobonian  Library  at  Rome  a 
manuscript  of  the  fourteenth  century  which  contained  the 
conclusion  to  the  Homilies.  Owing  to  Dr.  Dressel's 
illness  this  was  not  published  till  1S53.  Then  it  was 
discovered  that  seven  chapters  from  the  place  where  the 
break  occurred,  or  in  Chap,  xxii,  we  have  the  following 
passage  :  "  Wlience  our  Teacher,  when  we  inquired  of 
him  in  regard  to  the  man  who  was  blind  from  his  birth, 
and  recovered  his  sight,  if  this  man  sinned,  or  his  parents, 
that  he  should  be  born  blind,  answered,  *  Neither  did  he 
sin  at  all,  nor  his  parents,  but  that  the  power  of  God 
might  be  made  manifest  through  him  in  healing  the  sins 
of  ignorance.'  "     Here   is  an  incontrovertible  quotation 


24  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

from  John  ix.  2,  3,  for  not  only  is  the  agreement  unusu- 
ally close,  but  the  incident  of  the  healing  of  the  man  blind 
from  his  birth  is  told  only  by  the  author  of  the  fourth 
gospel.  This  is  the  more  pertinent  to  our  discussion  in 
view  of  the  fact  noted  above,  that  in  the  very  year  of  the 
publication  of  the  missing  chapters  so  sweeping  and  con- 
fident an  assertion  had  been  made  as  that  of  Zeller.  Of 
course,  when  one  unmistakable  quotation  had  been  dis- 
covered, the  possibility  that  other  traces  of  the  gospel 
might  be  found  became  not  merely  a  probability  but 
almost  a  certainty. 

We   must   not,    however,    overesti- 
Doubt  as  to  Date  ^    ^,  ,  r^i      ^    ^-  r  ^^ 

_  ^,     ^,  . .  mate  the  value  of  the  testimony  of  the 

of  the  Clementines.  -^ 

Clementines,  looked  at  from  the 
standpoint  of  antiquity.  There  is  a  wider  range  of  date 
given  to  them  than  to  any  other  really  ancient  Christian 
document  of  which  we  know.  They  have  been  placed  all 
the  way  along  from  160  A.D.  to  250.  It  is  certain  that 
part  of  the  Homilies  were  written  before  211  A.D. 
Probably  they  were  not  all  published  at  one  time.  The 
real  value  of  the  testimony  lies  in  this:  It  is  a  fresh  proof 
that  almost  every  discovery  of  early  Christian  literature 
brings  to  light  some  corroboration  of  older  evidence  or 
some  new  witness  to  the  Johannean  authorship  of  the  last 
gospel.  It  is  significant  that  no  new  support  arises  to 
help  the  cause  of  those  who  refuse  to  credit  that  evangel 
to  the  disciple  who  leaned  on  Jesus'  breast.  The  only 
notable  exceptions  to  the  former  of  these  statements  (they 
are  not  exceptions  to  the  latter)  are  the  Apology  of  Arts- 
tides  and  The  TeacJmig  of  the  Apostles  in  which  there  is 
probably  no  quotation  from  the  fourth  gospel. 


THE    JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  25 

The  theorem  with  which  we  set  out  has,  we 
Theory.  believe,  been  established,  viz.,  that  subsequent 
to  180  A.D.  the  testimony  to  the  fourth  gospel 
is  incontrovertible.  Not  a  tithe  of  the  evidence  that  can 
be  marshaled  lias  been  given.  We  have,  for  instance, 
not  touched  on  Tertullian  in  North  Africa.  All  we  have 
attempted,  all  we  can  attempt  to  do,  is  simply  to  indicate 
from  what  different  quarters,  and  with  what  decisiveness, 
the  evidence  compels  the  conclusion  of  the  universal  re- 
ception of  the  fourth  gospel  as  a  sacred  writing  at  least  as 
early  as  the  date  mentioned. 


CHAPTER  IV, 
External  Evidences,  Mostly  Prior  to  i8o  A.D. 

We    have  now,  taking  c.   1 80  A.D.    as 
Sources  of  .  .  i       .    ^ 

Authorities        °^^   starting    point,  to  trace  the  influence 

of  the   gospel  we  are  studying  backward 

as  far  as  we  can.     There    are    a    number   of  statements 

made  by  prominent  writers,   whose    works  have  for  the 

most    part   been    lost,   the    only  remains   of   which    are 

quotations  in  later  writers.     It  must  be  premised  that  in 

relying    on    these    quotations  we  are   on    perfectly   safe 

ground,  since  we  are  able  to  test  the  accuracy  of  many  of 

the  quotations  by  comparing  those  which  are  taken  from 

works  now  extant  with  the  originals.      The  Ecclesiastical 

History  of  Eusebius,  written  subsequently  to  324  A.D. ,  is 

the  source  of  most  of  these.     Indeed  the  principal  value  of 

this  work   consists  of  its    ''mostly   literal  extracts   from 

foreign,    and    in    some    cases     now    extinct,     sources" 

(Schaff's    History   of   the     Christian     Church,    Vol.     iii, 

p.  877). 

The  first  of  this  army  of  witnesses 
Polycrates  of  -     .      \       c        a    •       ^\  •  j  r 

Ephesus,  c.  190  A.D.    '^  ^^  ^^  ^°^'^^^  ^"   ^^^   evidence  of 

Polycrates,  bishop  of  Ephesus,  re- 
ferred to  by  Eusebius,  Hist.  EccL,  iii,  31,  and  quoted  in 
V.  24.  The  occasion  was  the  controversy  respecting  the 
day  of  the   Easter  celebration.     In   a   letter   to    Victor, 

26 


THE   JOIIANNEAN    PROBLEM.  TJ 

bishop  of  Rome,  he  says  :  *'  We  ....  observe  the  gen- 
uine day,  neither  adding  thereto  nor  taking  therefrom. 
For  in  Asia  great  lights  have  fallen  asleep,  ....  Philip, 
....  and  his  two  aged  virgin  daugliters,  ....  more- 
over, John,  who  rested  upon  the  bosom  of  the  Lord  (see 
John  xiii.  25,  'the  Lord'  being  substituted  for  'Jesus,' 
otherwise  the  words  exactly  correspond),  ....  is  buried 
at  Ephesus;  also  Polycarp  of  Smyrna,  ....  Thraseas, 
.  .  .  .  Sagaris,  ....  Papirius;  and  Melito  ....  all 
these  observed  the  fourteenth  day  of  the  Passover  accord- 
ing TO  THE  GOSPEL,  deviating  in  no  respect,  but  following 
the  rule  of  faith.  Moreover,  I,  Polycrates,  who  am  the 
least  of  all  of  you,  according  to  the  tradition  of  my  rela- 
tives, some  of  whom  I  have  followed.  For  there  were 
seven,  my  relatives,  bishops,  and  I  am  the  eighth;  and 
my  relatives  always  observed  the  day  when  the  people 
threw  away  the  leaven^  There  were  two  parties  in  the 
early  church,  one  of  which  considered  the  Christian  Pass- 
over as  a  movable  festival,  and  celebrated  it  on  the  first 
day  of  the  week,  or  Sunday.  The  other  party  appealed  to 
the  authority  of  John  and  Pliilip,  and,  like  Polycrates  in 
the  extract  above,  to  tJie  fourth  gospel^  in  support  of  the 
14th  Nisan  as  the  day  of  celebration.  The  fourth 
gospel  stands  alone  in  seeming  to  make  the  14th  Nisan 
the  day  of  suffering  of  our  Lord.  Apart  from  the  ques- 
tion of  the  i)aschal  controversy,  the  verbal  coincidence 
with  John  xiii,  25  in  the  description  of  John  is  too  close 
to  be  fortuitous.  But  still  more  significant  than  this  is 
the  appeal  to  the  practice  of  the  ''great  lights  "  prior  to 
himself  who  observed  the  day  indicated  not  by  the  synop- 
tists  but  by  the  author  of  the  fourth  gospel. 


28  THE   JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

Claudius  ApoUinarius,  or  Apolli- 
ClaudiusApoUinarius  .     ,  .  ,  r  -n-  ,-•      ^, 

or  Apollinaris,  ^^^^^'  ^^^^^°P   ^^  Hierapolis  m  Phry- 

fl.  c.  166-171  A.D.  E^^}    ^^^s   a   bishop  whose   writings 

were  widely  known,  highly  esteemed, 
and  generally  received.  In  fragments,  preserved  in  the 
Chronicon  Paschale,  and  generally  allowed  to  ApoUi- 
narius, he  refers  to  the  difference  between  the  synoptic 
gospels  and  the  last  one.  He  also  says  :  *'The  same  [the 
Son  of  God]  was  pierced  in  his  holy  side ;  the  same  that 
poured  forth  again  the  two  purifying  elements,  water  and 
blood."  Here  the  reference  can  be  only  to  John  xix.  34, 
or  as  some  claim,  but  with  small  probability,  to  an  oral 
tradition.  The  synoptic  gospels  say  nothing  of  the 
piercing  of  the  side  and  the  issue  of  water  and  blood. 

Another  bishop  whose  literary  ac- 
Melito  of  Sardis,  .    .  ,  ,  . 

fl   160-180  tivity  was  very  great,  but  whose  writ- 

ings have  almost  entirely  perished, 
was  Melito,  bishop  of  Sardis.  This  early  writer,  in  a  frag- 
ment which  is  supposed  to  date  from  about  the  year  165, 
A.D.,  shows  a  knowledge  of  John's  gospel  by  alluding,  in 
an  argument  for  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  to  his  works  and 
miracles  which  were  wrought  for  ^/iree  years.  His  words 
are  as  follows:  ''For  being  God,  and  at  the  same  time 
perfect  man,  he  himself  displayed  to  us  his  two  natures — 
his  deity  by  the  signs  during  the  three  years  after  the  bap- 
tism, and  his  humanity  during  the  thirty  years  preceding 
his  baptism."  This  is  in  opposition  to  what  the  synop- 
tics, apart  from  the  fourth  gospel,  seem  to  indicate.  With- 
out the  ''spiritual  gospel,"  we  should  be  left  to  infer  a 
ministry  extending  over  only  one  year. 

An  epistle  to  the  churches  of  Asia  from  the  churches 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  29 

of  Vienne  and  Lyons,  dated  about  177  A.D.   (probably), 

has,   "Then  was  fulfilled  the  declar- 

Epistle  of  Vienne             ^.            /•               y        1      4.1  „«.    «.u^  1^  , 

^  X            ,««  »  x^      ation    of    our    Lord,    that    the  day 

and  Lyons,  177  A.D.  ^ 

would    come    when   every   one  that 

slayeth    you  will    think    that    he  doeth   God   a   service." 

Compare  John  xvii.  2. 

From  the  citadel  of  Greek  culture, 
Athenag-oras  of  ,  ^,  ,  •. 

,^,«   ,  ^         Athens,    comes     our     next     witness. 
Athens,  177  A.D.  ' 

This    is    Athenagoras,    an    Athenian 

philosopher,  who  embraced   Christianity  and  presented  to 

the  Emperors  Aurelius  Antoninus  and  Aurelius  Commodus 

a  Plea  for   the   Christians.     The    tenth    chapter   of   this 

writing  is  based  upon  the  prologue  to  the  fourth  gospel, 

although  there  are  not  more  than  four  or   five  consecutive 

words   quoted.     Thus   he   says:     ''We   acknowledge    one 

God,   ....    by   whom    the    universe    has   been    created 

through  his  Logos,  and  set  in  order,  and  is  kept  in  being, 

....  But  the  Son  of  God  is  the  Logos  of  the  Father 

.   .   .   .    ;   for  after  the  pattern  of  him  and  by  him  were  all 

things   made  .   .   .   ."       The   dependence    on    our   gospel 

here  is  not  to  be  denied. 

The  testimony  now  to   be  brought  under  inspection  is 

the  fragment  on  the  resurrection,  to 
Fragment  "  On  the    ^^^^-^^^    ^j^^    ^^^^    ^^  ^j3     -^    ^^_ 

Resurrection,"  .  j     1       t-i  • 

c   150  A  D  Signed  and  generally  conceded.     Ihis 

speaks  of  ''The  Logos  of  God  who 
became  his  Son  came  to  us  clothed  in  flesh,  revealing  both 
himself  and  the  Father,  giving  to  us  in  himself  the  resur- 
rection from  the  dead  and  the  eternal  life  which  follows." 
In  this  passage  there  are  references  to  John  i.  i,  14,  xiv. 
9,  and  xi.  25,  26.     Nowhere  but  in  the  fourth  gospel  at 


30  THE   JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

that  time  was  the  idea  of  the  Logos  brought  into  connec- 
tion with  the  incarnation. . 

The    foregoino^    testimonies    taken 
Tatian  the  Syrian,      •    j-    •  i      ,,  , 

110-172  A  D  maiviaually  are  perhaps  not  of  such 

great  weight.  But  one  characteristic 
of  the  argument  for  the  genuineness  of  the  fourth  gospel 
is  that  there  are  so  many  minor  indices,  all  of  which  point 
in  the  same  direction.  These  testimonies  are  cumula- 
tive. The  deponent  whom  we  next  introduce  is  Tatian 
the  Syrian,  one  whose  affirmation  belongs  among  the  most 
decisive  of  the  witnesses  to  be  given  for  the  gospel.  The 
dates  we  have  given  are  those  agreed  on  by  Zahn  and  Har- 
nack,  who  do  not  generally  stand  on  the  same  ground. 
Funk  puts  the  first  date  ten  years  later.  Tatian  v/as  a 
pupil,  perhaps  a  convert,  of  Justin  Martyr,  and  this  rela- 
tionship to  Justin  is  one  on  which  much  stress  will  be 
laid  when  we  come  to  treat  of  the  latter's  testimony  to  our 
gospel.  This  father  is  of  great  value  to  the  defenders  of 
the   Johannean    authorship   for   two    reasons.     He  wrote, 

about  153  A.D.,  an  Address  to  the 
"Address  to  the  ^       7     •  1  •  i     , 

Greeks  "  Lrreeks  in   which  he  quotes,  with  an 

implication  that  they  are  well-known 

words,    ''The   darkness   comprehendeth   not    the    light" 

(John  i.  5).     He  has  also  the  following  from  the  gospel, 

''  God  is  a  Spirit  "  (John  iv.  24);    ''AH  things  were  made 

by  him,  and  without  him  not  one  thing  was  made  "   (John 

i.   3).     In   these  quotations  he   agrees   very  closely  with 

the  ancient  Curetonian  Syriac  version.     If  he  had  left  us 

no  more  than  this,  he  would   have  deserved  our  thanks. 

But  we  are  principally  indebted  to  him  for  a  work  the 

story  of  the  recovery  of  v/hich  is  fascinating.     We  knew 


THE    JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  31 

from  notices  in  the  writings  of  Eusebius,  Epiphanius,  and 

Theodoret,  that  Tatian  had  compiled 

Tatian's  Harmony.  ,  re  i        u-   i     i. 

a  harmony  of  four  gospels  which  he 

called  ''The  [Gospel]  by  Four,"  but  no  copy  was  known 
to  have  survived,  and  the  general  opinion  was  that  it  was 
irretrievably  lost.  It  became  known  also  that  Ephraem 
Syrus  wrote  a  commentary  on  this  Diatessaron  or  Har- 
mony, but  that  too  had  disappeared.  It  was  discovered, 
however,  in  an  Armenian  version,  on  two  manuscripts 
about  seven  hundred  years  old.  This  Armenian  text  was 
published  in  1836,  a  Latin  translation  was  made  and  given 
out  in  1S41,  and  a  revised  translation  was  published  in 
1876.  From  these  sources  the  indefatigable  Dr.  Zahn  un- 
dertook to  reconstruct  the  Diatessaron  with  results  that 
have  subsequently  been  proved  excellent.  This  achieve- 
ment in  itself  was  wonderful,  but  still  greater  things  were 
to  follow.     It  became  known  that  in  the  Vatican  Library 

was  an  Arabic  manuscript  which  was 
Its  Discovery.  .  ,       ,  ^   ^    -i    ^       .^ 

in    some  way  closely    related    to    the 

Diatessaron.  After  some  time,  still  another  manuscript 
was  found  in  Egypt,  and  in  i8S8  botli  were  edited  by 
Ciasca,  tlie  two  manuscripts  admirably  supplementing 
each  other,  and  furnishing  a  complete  text,  tlie  Egyptian 
manuscript  particularly  professing  to  be  a  translation  of 
the  Syriac  of  the  Harmony.  Ciasca  furnished  a  Latin 
rendering,  and  a  comparison  of  the  Latin,  the  Armenian, 
and  the  Arabic  versions  shows  beyond  doubt  that  we  have 
the  long  lost  Diatessaron  of  the  Syrian. 

When  attention  was  drawn  to  the  Diatessaron,  the  ques- 
tion was  asked,  Which  are  the  four  gospels  used?  Are 
they  our  four?     If  this  were  so,  the  inference  was  imme- 


32  THE  JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

diate  that  at  the  time  of  the  compilation  of  the  Harmony 
those  four  and  those  only  were  received  as  canonical  in 
the  region  where  Tatian  was  at  home.  We  had  heard 
that  it  began  with  a  quotation  from  St.  John's  gospel. 
We  have  now  ascertained  this  to  be  the  case,  and  that  the 
gospels  used  were  our  gospels  and  those  only.  Further- 
more, Dr.  Harman  has  calculated  that 
Uses  our  Four       .i,      t\-   4.  ^  j      i,      *. 

Gosr>eis  Diatessaron  nas  used  about  seventy- 

seven  per  cent,  of  Matthew,  fifty  per 
cent,  of  Mark,  seventy-five  per  cent,  of  Luke,  and  ninety 
per  cent,  of  John  ! 

It  has  been  shown,  also,  that  the  Arabic  versions  show 
a  very  much  closer  agreement  with  the  Curetonian  Syriac 
than  with  the  Greek  of  the  gospels.  We  have,  then,  a 
Harmony  of  our  four  gospels,  constructed  at  any  rate  by 
170  A.D.,  and  perhaps  by  160.  And  this  Harmony  begi?is 
and  ends  with  passages  from  the  fourth  gospel !  In  all 
probability  Tatian  used  an  existing  Syriac  translation  and 
did  not  translate  for  himself.  The  original  gospels  must 
therefore  have  existed  for  some  time  prior  to  Tatian's  use 
of  them.  Dr.  Harnack's  conclusion  is  as  follows:  *'We 
learn  from  the  Diatessaron  that  about  160  A.D.  our  four 
gospels  had  already  taken  a  place  of  prominence  in  the 
Church  and  that  no  others  had  done  so ;  that  in  particular 
the  fourth  gospel  had  taken  a  fixed  place  alongside  of 
the  three  ^synoptics.'  Add  to  this  the  fact  that  in  his 
(Tatian's) /^^^r^i-^- written  r.  153  A.D.,  the  words,  *The 
darkness  comprehendeth  not  the  light,'  are  quoted  as 
though  well  known,  we  get  at  once  the  impression  that 
the  gospel  with  which  we  are  concerned  had  already  been 
long  in  use." 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  33 

Mention  of  the  two  early  versions 

The  Old  Latin  and  should  be  made  right  here,  for  two 
Syriac  Versions,  .  ,  .... 

150-170  A  D  reasons,  viz.  :  the  proximity  in  time, 

and  the  similarity  in  value  of  evidence, 
to  that  we  derive  from  Tatian's  Diatessaron.  The  versions 
of  which  we  speak  are  the  ''Old  Latin  "  (not  the  Vulgate, 
which  is  much  later),  and  the  "Old  Syriac"  or  "  Cure- 
tonian  "  (not  the  Peshito,  which  is  also  later).  Drs.  Lid- 
don  and  Westcott  are  agreed  that  the  former  was  written 
prior  to  170  A.D.,  and  the  agreement  remarked  on  above 
between  Tatian's  Harmony  and  the  Curetonian  Syriac  im- 
plies for  the  latter  a  date  prior  to  160  A.D.,  probably 
150-160  A.D.,  though  Dr.  Westcott  puts  it  within  the  first 
half  of  the  second  century,  /.  e.,  before  150  A.D.  Both 
of  these  versions  are  known  to  have  contained  the  fourth 
gospel. 

Yet  another  valuable  piece  of  evi- 
Muratorian  Frag-         ■■  ..   i         1        j    1  rr-i  •     • 

ment,  date?  ^^"^^  ^'^"'^   ^^  P^^^^^   ^^^'^'      ^^^"^  '' 

the   celebrated  Muratorian  fragment, 

without  title,  defective  at  the  beginning  and  the  end,  dis- 
covered by  Muratori  in  Milan,  published  by  him  in  1740, 
and  professing  to  be  by  a  contemporary  of  Pius,  bishop  of 
Rome,  139-156  (outside  dates  are  given).  This  fragment 
is  written  in  very  corrupt  Latin,  which  is  generally  allowed 
to  be  a  translation  from  an  original  in  Greek  verse.  The 
authorship  has  been  assigned  to  Caius  of  Rome  and  to 
Hegesippus,  but  this  is  nothing  more  than  conjecture. 
The  date  of  the  fragment  is  generally,  in  fact  all  but  uni- 
versally, placed  A.D.  170  or  earlier.  But  lately  there  is  a 
disposition  to  accept  a  later  date  nearer  the  beginning  of 
the  third  century.     The  fragment  has  been  considered  the 


34  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

earliest  list  of  the  books  considered  canonical  by  the 
Christians.  But  no  matter  what  the  date,  we  shall  see 
that  its  testimony  is  most  weighty.  In  this  we  find  the 
following:  ''The  fourth  gospel  is  that  of  John,  one 
of  the  disciples.  When  his  fellow-disciples  and  bishops 
entreated  him,  he  said,  *  fast  ye  now  with  me  for  the  space 
of  three  days,  and  let  us  recount  to  each  other  whatever 
may  be  revealed  to  each  of  us. '  In  the  same  night  it  was 
revealed  to  Andrew,  one  of  the  apostles,  that  John  should 
narrate  all  things  in  his  own  name,  they  revising  them. 
....  Thus  [John]  professed  himself  to  be  not  only  the 
eye-witness  but  also  the  hearer ;  and  besides  that,  the  his- 
torian of  all  the  wondrous  facts  concerning  the  Lord  in 
their  order." 

The  first  thing  noticeable  about  this  excerpt  is  the  order 
of  the  gospels.  The  fourth  of  the  fragment  is  our  fourth. 
Next,  the  authorship  is  ascribed  to  John.  If  we  except 
the  statement  by  Theophilus,  possibly  not  excepting  even 

that,  this  may  be  the  earliest  mention  of 
Testimonv      J*^^^^^  ^^  the  author.     We  must  not  neglect 

to  call  attention  to  what,  curiously  enough, 
has  not  been  given  its  full  force  in  the  argument, 
namely,  the  legendary  character  of  the  story  of  the 
origin.  There  are  two  possible  explanations  of  this:  it 
may  denote  that  the  origin  of  the  fragment  was  later  than 
170  A.D.,  or  it  may  indicate  that  the  gospel  had  been 
composed  so  much  earlier  than  170  A.D.  that  sufficient 
time  had  elapsed  to  allow  the  growth  of  the  legend. 
Even  supposing  a  late  date  for  the  fragment,  the  legend 
must  have  taken  years  to  assume  the  form  in  which  we 
have  it.     If  the  second  explanation,  to  which  we  incline. 


THE  JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  35 

be  correct,  liow  far  back  must  the  composition  of  the 
gospel  necessarily  be  put !  But  not  less  significant  than 
even  this  is  the  fact  that  the  writer  mentions  John  "  ex- 
actly as  he  mentions  Luke  or  Paul,  so  as  to  leave  the  reader 
under  the  impression  that  he  is  speaking  of  things  univer- 
sally acknowledged"  (Luthardt,  Comm,  on  John,  Engl, 
transl.,  i,  203). 


CHAPTER  V. 

Justin  Martyr. 

"Justin  Martyr  is  perhaps  the  most 
t^ee^D^^'  important  authority  among  the  fathers 
for  the  genuineness  of  John's  gospel, 
both  on  account  of  his  proximity  in  time  to  the  apostle, 
and,  notwithstanding  the  assertion  of  some  critics,  the 
distinctness  of  his  references."  So  says  Gloag  in  his 
Introduction  to  the  Johannine  Writings,  p.  102.  It  is  to 
this  father's  testimony  that  we  now  turn.  We  are  again 
slightly  embarrassed  by  a  doubt  as  to  the  dates  to  be 
assigned.  The  most  general  consensus  is  upon  the  death 
date,  which  nearly  all  scholars  place  in  166  A.D.  The 
limits  of  his  literary  activity  are  by  good  authorities  con- 
sidered to  have  been  narrowed  from  130-166  A.D.  to 
140-150  A.D.  Dr.  Hoyt  places  the  first  Apology  in 
145-146  A.D.,  and  the  second  in  the  following  year. 
Another  date  for  the  first  Apology,  accepted  by  the  high 
authorities,  Drs.  Caspari  and  Harnack,  is  138-139  A.D. 
We  are,  if  the  earlier  date  be  correct,  getting  perilously 
near  the  times  of  the  Apostle  John. 

Justin's  extant  writings  are  quite  numerous  and  are 
exceedingly  important  looked  at  from  every  standpoint. 
Especially  precious  for  our  purpose  are  his  two  Apologies 
and  the  Dialogue  with  Trypho. 

36 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  37 

In  weighing  the  evidence  of  Justin,  one  must  ever  keep 
in  mind  the  purpose  of  his  writing.  His  first  Apology  is 
addressed  to  the  Emperor,  Senate  and  people  of  Rome, 
who  did  not  accept  the  Christian  writings,  to  which, 
therefore,  Justin  could  not  refer  as  authoritative.  If  then 
in  this  writing  there  are  citations  from  our  gospel,  they 
will  not  be  formal  quotations,  but  will  be  likely  to  appear 
as  indirect  allusions.  A  similar  conclusion  holds  with 
reference  to  the  Dialogue  with  Trypho,  a  Jew,  for  whom 
New  Testament  writings  had  no  authority. 

No  one  can  read  Justin  without  noticing  the  frequency 

of  the  occurrence  of  the  term  "  Memoirs." 
The 

,, ,,        .      ,,      Sometimes    it    is   simply   the   ''Memoirs," 
"Memoirs.  ^   ^ 

as  when  he  says,  "I  have  learned  from 
the  Memoirs"  (Trypho,  cv).  Sometimes  the  phra.se  is 
expanded  and  we  have  ''Memoirs  of  the  Apostles"  as 
in  First  Apology,  l.xvii,  "the  Memoirs  of  the  Apostles 
or  the  writings  of  tlie  prophets  are  read,  as  long  as 
time  permits."  Again  tlie  phrase  becomes  "The  Me- 
moirs of  His  [Christ's]  Apostles,"  as  in  the  Dialogue, 
ci.  These  "Memoirs"  are  in  one  place  closely  iden- 
tified by  the  words,  "The  Apostles  in  the  Memoirs 
composed  by  them  which  are  called  gospels"  (First 
Apology,  Ixvi).  The  part  they  played  in  Christian  wor- 
ship is  indicated  in  the  First  Apology,  Chap.  Ixvii :  "  On 
the  day  called  Sunday  all  who  live  in  cities  or  in  the 
country  gather  together  to  one  place,  and  the  Memoirs  of 
the  Apostles  or  the  writings  of  the  Prophets  are  read  as 
long  as  time  permits."  The  subject  and  the  authors  are 
treated  in  other  extracts  (i  Apol.,  xxxiii)  :  "Memoirs 
of  all    things   which  relate   to  our   Lord  Jesus   Christ," 


38  THE   JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

and  (Dialogue,  ciii),  ".  .  .  .The  Memoirs  which  I  say 
were  composed  by  His  Apostles  and  those  who  followed 
them." 

Concerning  these  Memoirs  it  is  fitting 

Their  Position        ^i     .  ..•        4.^  -a.-         4.^ 

that  we  notice  the  position   they  occu- 
and  Use.  ^  ■' 

pied  before  we  determine  exactly  what 
they  were.  We  have  noted  the  use  to  which  they  were 
put  in  the  Christian  assemblies.  They  were  read  along- 
side of  ''the  Prophets,"  and  had  we  quoted  further,  we 
should  have  found  they  were  commented  upon  in  the 
same  way.  The  ''Memoirs"  and  "the  Prophets"  stood 
on  equal  footing  apparently;  we  know  that  "  the  Proph- 
ets" were  regarded  as  sacred  books  by  the  Christians, 
hence  the  "Memoirs"  were  also  sacred  books.  We  are 
likewise  told  of  their  contents:  they  were  "Memoirs  of 
all  things  which  relate  to  Jesus  Christ,"  that  is,  were  his- 
tories which  centred  in  Jesus.  Furthermore  they  were 
written  by  the  "Apostles  and  those  who  followed  thony 
Now  but  one  thing  is  lacking  to  make  the  identification 
of  these  "Memoirs"  with  our  gospels  in  the  highest 
degree  probable  before  proceeding  to  trace  their  contents 
as  revealed  in  this  or  that  saying.  Had  Justin  ever  said 
that  there  were  four  of  these  memoirs,  from  data  no  more 
definite  than  we  have  already  before  us,  we  should  have 
concluded  at  once  that  they  were  our  gospels.  But  this 
he  did  not  say.  We  have  been  compelled,  therefore,  to 
compare,  page  by  page  and  line  by  line,  what  Justin  says 
of  the  memoirs  with  the  contents  of  our  gospels.  The 
result  is  that  we  find  he  had  used  our  four  gospels. 
Of  course  we  are  not  concerned  to  prove  here  his  use  of 
the  synoptics  \  we  wish  however  to  point  out  one  thing, 


THE  JOHANNEAN  PROBLEM.  39 

viz.,  the   close  connection  between  Ireneeus   and  Justin, 
that'  they  were  contemporaries,  were  probably  in  Rome 
together,  that  Iren^eus  looks  on  Justin  as  his  master,  and 
quotes  him  often,  and  that  Irena^us  holds  to  four  gospels 
and  those  four  the  very  ones   which  we   possess.     What 
other  conclusion  could  we  draw  a  priori,  than  that  Jus- 
tin's   '* Memoirs"     are    Irenaeus'    gospels   and   therefore 
ours?     As   to  the  first  three  gospels  no   doubt  has  been 
entertained.     The  question  has  always  been,  did  he  know 
our  fourth  gospel?     That  question  has  been  answered   in 
the  affirmative  so  fully  and  decisively  that  no  other  pos- 
sibility now  remains.     The   late  Dr.  Ezra  Abbot  is    the 
man  who   more   than  any  other  has  contributed  to  this 

result. 

The  following  are  the   passages   which   de- 
Quotations  j^^Qi-^strate  Justin's   use   of  the  fourth   gospel, 
in  Justin.      ^^^^^   p.^^^   Apology,    Chap.    Ixi,    we    read, 
''  For  Christ  also  said,  '  Except  ye  be  born  again,  ye  shall 
not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven.'     Now  that  it  is 
impossible  for  those  who  have  once  been  born  to  enter 
into  their  mothers'  wombs,  is  evident  to  all."     Of  course 
this  is  derived  at   once   from   John  iii.    5.     In  the  sixth 
chapter  of  the  Second  Apology  we   have  the  following, 
which,  while  not  strictly  a  quotation,  shows  its  depend- 
ence on  the  prologue  of  the  John  gospel:   ''And  his  Son, 
who  alone  is  properly  called  Son,  the  Logos,  who  was  also 
with  him   and  was  begotten   before  the   works,  when   at 
first  he  created  and  arranged  all  things  by  him,  is  called 
Christ,   in    reference    to    his   being   anointed   and  God's 
ordering  all  things  through  him."     In  the  Dialogue  with 
Trypho,  Chap.  Ixxxviii,  we  have  the  following  reference  to 


40  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

John  i.  20-23  :  ^'  For  when  John  [the  Baptist]  sat  by  the 
Jordan,  ....  men  supposed  him  to  be  Christ ;  but  he 
cried  to  them,  '  I  am  not  the  Christ,  but  the  voice  of  one 

crying;' "     This  saying  of  the  Baptist  is  found  in 

the  fourth  gospel  and  nowhere  else.  In  Chap,  xci  of  the 
same  writing  is  found  a  somewhat  far-fetched  exegesis  of 
John  iii.  14;  and  in  Chap,  cv  we  find,  ^'Forl  have  already 
proved  that  he  was  the  only-begotten  of  the  Father  of  all 
things,  being  begotten  in  a  peculiar  manner,  word  and 
power  by  him,  and  having  become  man  through  the  Vir- 
gin as  we  have  learned  through  tlie  memoirs ^  The  itali- 
cized words  are  from  John  i.  14.  Notice  the  source  from 
whence  he  learns  this — the  Memoirs;  but  only  our 
gospel  teaches  explicitly  the  preexistence  of  Jesus. 
^j^.-  Dr.  Ezra  Abbot  marks,  as  among  his  conclusions,  that 
Justin's  references  to  the  Logos  as  incarnated  point  in- 
dubitably to  John's  prologue,  and  Dr.  Westcott  points  out 
that   the   synoptists   do    not   anywhere  de- 

^  ■         .  clare     Tesus'    preexistence.     Another    very 

Conclusions.  j  1  j 

strong  indication  of  the  use  of  the  fourth 
gospel  by  Justin  is  the  allusion  to  the  cure  of  congen- 
ital diseases,  mentioned  only  by  John.  Justin  also 
says  that  'Uhe  apostles  [notice  the  plural]  have  written" 
concerning  the  descent  of  the  Spirit  as  a  dove  at  the  bap- 
tism of  Jesus.  Only  Matthew  and  John,  the  two  apostolic 
writers  of  gospels,  speak  of  this — an  incidental  but  very 
weighty  allusion.  We  have  also  seen  that  Justin  affirms 
the  Memoirs  to  have  been  written  by  ''the  apostles  and 
those  who  followed  them."  This  allows  for  gospels 
written  by,  at  least,  two  apostles  and  tivo  apostolic  fol- 
lowers, just  what  we  learn  from  other  sources  is  the  case 


THE   JOIIANNEAN    PROBLEM.  4^ 

with  our  gospels.     This  may  be  a  mere  coincidence  ;  but, 
if  so,  it  is  a  very  remarkable  one. 

Dr.  Abbot  sums  up  as  follows:  ''The  positive  reasons 
for  believing  that  Justin  derived  his  quotations  from  [the 
fourth  gospel]  are:  (i)  The  fact  that  in  no  other  report  of 
the  teaching  of  Christ,  except  of  John,  do  we  find  the 
figure  of  the  new  birth ;  (2)  the  insistence  in  both  Justm 
and  John  on  the  necessity  of  the  new  birth  to  the  entrance 
into  the  kingdom  of  heaven;  (3)  its  mention  in  both  in 
connection  with  baptism;  (4)  and  last  and  most  impor- 
tant of  all,  the  fact  that  Justin's  remark  on  the  impossi- 
bility of  a  second  natural  birth  is  such  a  platitude,  in  the 
form  in  which  he  presents  it,  that  we  cannot  regard  it  as 

original." 

Several    protests     have    been    entered 
Objections  against  the  inference  from  the  above  pas- 

te Dr.  Abbot's  ^^^^^         .^^  ^^^^  j^l^^^     One  objec- 

Inferences.  &  J  "  .      

tion   is  that  the  passages  show  variations 

from  the  Johannean  text  as  we  have  them,  that  they  are 
not  sufficiently  close  to  be  quotations.  The  answer  to 
this  is:  first,  that  alongside  of  the  quotation  from  John  is 
one  from  Isaiah,  which  is  just  as  loosely  made  ;  secondly, 
several  of  the  variations  found  in  Justin  are  found  in  other 
fathers,  and  just  as  the  first  passage  is  blended  in  Justin 
with  a  reminiscence  of  Matt,  xviii.  3,  so  is  it  in  Clement 
of  Alexandria ;  thirdly,  it  was  the  habit  of  the  fathers  to 
quote  loosely,  to  abridge,  transpose,  combine  and  translate ; 
fourthly,  not  a  single  variation  in  Justin  from  the  text  but 
has  its  numerous  parallels  in  ancient  an^  viodern  writers. 

Another   objection   that  has    been   raised    is   that    the 
author  of  the   fourth  gospel  borrowed  from  Justin.     The 


42  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

only  answer  possible  to  this  is  that  the  eye  which  can  dis- 
cern such  a  relationship,  which  can  see  in  a  work  so  origi- 
nal as  the  gospel  a  dependence  upon  an  author  so  differ- 
ent in  that  particular  as  Justin,  is  certainly  in  need  of  treat- 
ment. Even  the  most  unrelenting  of  the  opponents  of  the 
genuineness  of  our  gospel  have  not  thought  this  argument 
worth  repeating. 

The  point  has  been  raised  that  Justin  derived  his  Logos 
doctrine  not  from  the  gospel  but  from  Philo.  To  this  the 
decisive  reply  is  that  Philo  never  treats  of  the  Logos  as 
incarnated.  Remember  that  this  is  the  centre  of  John's 
doctrine,  that  he  treats  not  only  of  '^  the  Word"  but  of 
'* the  Word  w^^d"  flesh,^^  and  that  in  this  Justin  follows 
him  throughout,  and  the  objection  falls  at  once. 

Of  the  scantiness  of  Justin's  employment  of  the  gospel 
much  has  also  been  made.  Why  did  he  not  use  it  more 
to  support  his  exposition  of  the  Logos  ?  To  this  the  an- 
swer is:  (i)  Albrecht  Thoma  has  investigated  the  Literary 
Relation  of  Justin  to  Paul  and  to  John' s  Gospel,  and 
reaches  the  conclusion  that  Justin  uses  almost  every  chap- 
ter of  the  Logos  gospel,  and  some  chapters  very  fully ;  (2) 
the  argument  from  scantiness  of  quotation  would  bear 
almost  as  heavily  upon  the  Mark  gospel,  which  is  used 
only  a  few  times,  yet  the  antiquity  of  which  is  conceded 
on  all  sides ;  (3)  at  most  this  proves  that  gospel  history 
was  current  in  synoptic  form. 

In  line  with  this  last  objection  is  the  question,  Why  has 
Justin  not  used  John  as  he  has  the  synoptists  for  the  his- 
tory? The  reply  is  that  we  cannot  tell.  But  we  must 
point  to  the  precariousness  of  a  negative  argument  as 
illustrated  above  in  the  case  of  Mark. 


THE    JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  43 

An  objection  resembling  the  foregoing  is  interposed  in 
the  statement  that  John  is  quoted  in  the  Dialogue  as  the 
author  of  the  Apocalypse  ;  why  not  then  of  the  fourth  gos- 
pel? To  this,  perhaps,  the  best,  and  certainly  a  sufficient 
answer,  is  that  in  the  dialogue,  John,  though  one  of  the 
best  known  apostles,  is  introduced  as  a  stranger  to  the 
Jew.  In  the  apologies,  Justin  addressed  heathen  who 
did  not  know  the  apostles,  and  to  whom  the  names  would 
be  meaningless.  And,  besides,  Justin  was  followed  in 
this  practice  by  the  apologists  down  to  the  time  of  Eu- 
sebius. 

An  d  priori  difficulty  has  been  urged,  that  John  con- 
tradicted the  synoptics  and  therefore  could  not  have  been 
used  by  Justin.  But  all  four  gospels  were  certainly  cur- 
rent side  by  side  toward  the  close  of  the  century,  when 
the  objection  would  be  as  good  as  in  Justin's  time. 

A    brief   review    may   be   advantageous 

,,     „  . ,  here.     We   have   spoken  of  the   universal 

the  Evidence.  ^ 

reception  within  the  church  of  the  Johan- 
nine  gospel  from  A.D.  i8o  on.  We  have  illustrated 
its  unquestioned  use  by  Irenaeus  of  Lyons  and  Clement 
of  Alexandria,  have  hinted  at  the  corroborative  testimony 
of  Tertullian  at  Carthage,  and  have  called  Theophilus  of 
Antioch,  Polycrates  of  Ephesus,  Melito  of  Sardis,  and 
Athenagoras  of  Athens,  as  witnesses  from  the  East.  We 
have  shown  the  currency  of  the  gospel  in  the  Syrian 
church  by  the  abundant  use  Tatian  has  made  of  it,  and 
this  currency  in  ancient  times  has  been  made  more  sure  by 
the  evidence  of  the  Old  Latin  and  Old  Syriac  versions. 

We  have  traced  its  existence  backward  step  by  step  to 
the  beginning  of  the  second  third  of  the  second  century, 


44  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

all  the  time,  we  must  remember,  not  as  a  new  gospel,  but 
as  in  current  use  among  Christians. 

We  have  found  citations  from  it  in  Justin  at  a  date 
which  is  variously  put  from  A.D.  138  to  145.  This  early 
father  cited  it  as  one  of  the  "  Memoirs  "  which  he  identi- 
fied with  the  ' '  Gospels. ' '  If  his  First  Apology  was  written 
even  so  late  as  145  A.D.,  we  can  hardly  allow  less  than  a 
generation  for  the  gospel  to  take  the  place  it  has  with 
him,  o?i  the  supposition  that  another  than  the  apostle  wrote 
it.  If  the  apostle  were  known  to  have  written  it,  it  would, 
of  course,  have  gone  at  once  into  circulation.  But  even 
were  it  a  new  composition  issued  just  prior  to  his  Apology 
(a  supposition  which  is  not  tenable  because  of  the  manner 
of  Justin's  employment  of  it),  if  it  had  then  been  put  forth 
falsely  as  a  composition  of  the  apostle,  there  were  those 
living  who  had  known  John,  who  would  have  recognized 
the  spuriousness  of  the  composition  and  would  at  once  have 
denounced  the  effort  to  palm  on  the  world  a  fictitious 
Johannean  gospel.  We  cannot  resist  the  conclusion  that 
if  we  had  no  earlier  testimony,  the  witness  of  Justin 
places  our  gospel  so  far  back  that  it  would  have  been  im- 
possible for  it  to  gain  currency  as  a  pseudonymous  produc- 
tion. Our  testimony  thus  far,  let  us  remember,  comes 
with  one  exception,  the  Clementines,  from  the  orthodox 
Christians  of  the  whole  church,  East  and  West. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Testimony  of  Heretical  Sects. 

We  have  had  occasion  to  speak 
The  Gospel  of  Peter;  ^^  ^j^^  rediscovery  of  Christian 
date  ?  ,  ,       .  . 

hterature  supposed  to  be  irretriev- 
ably lost.  We  have  once  again  to  call  attention  to  a 
discovery  of  this  sort.  Eusebius  (^Hist.  EccL,  vi,  12)  has 
preserved  an  extract  from  a  letter  or  work  on  a  "  Gospel 
of  Peter"  which  letter  was  written  by  Serapion,  bishop  of 
Antioch,  A.D.  190-203,  to  the  church  of  Rhossus.  In 
this  letter  he  interdicts  the  use  of  that  gospel  as  being  of 
a  docetic  character,  although  he  had  formerly  and  without 
sufficient  examination  granted  permission  to  read  it. 
Eusebius  himself  refers  to  it  in  several  places,  and  says 
that  it  is  heretical.  We  have  mention  of  it  also  in  the 
works  of  Jerome,  Theodoret,  and  Origen.  The  earliest 
reference  to  it  is  the  first  we  have  given,  which  we  may 
place,  say,  A.D.  192.  Several  Apocryphal  books  went 
under  Peter's  name,  such  as  the  Gospel,  an  Apocalypse, 
the  Acts  of  Peter,  and  the  Preaching  and  Travels  of  Peter, 
etc.  All  of  these  had  disappeared,  though  it  is  supposed 
that  we  have  the  Preaching  embodied  in  the  Clementines. 
Less  than  seven  years  ago  there  was 
Its  Discovery,        ^^^^^  ^^  ^^  Akhmim,  in  Upper  Egypt,  a 

manuscript  which  lay  for  six  years  in  Cairo,  attracting  no 

45 


46  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

attention.  It  was  not  published  till  late  in  1892,  and  then 
was  found  to  contain  a  fragment  of  the  Gospel  of  Peter, 
of  the  Apocalypse  of  Peter,  and  of  the  Book  of  Enoch. 
These  three  documents  were  all  instantly  recognized,  and 
their  value  for  critical  questions  now  under  discussion 
was  pointed  out.  We  are  concerned  here  only  with  the 
Gospel  of  Peter.  The  date  of  this  document 
is  not  settled.  It  must  be  much  earlier  than 
A.D.  190,  for  Serapion  either  before,  or  soon  after,  enter- 
ing his  bishopric,  found  it  in  use  in  a  church,  and  clearly 
not  as  a  new  book.  Its  composite  character,  derived  as  it 
is  from  the  other  gospels  (as  we  shall  see),  would  indicate 
a  date  later  than  some  Harmony,  say  Tatian's,  therefore 
A.D.  160.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it  agrees  so  fully 
with  Luke's  gospel  as  to  suggest  an  earlier  origin.  It 
uses  also  i  Peter  iii.  19.  Dr.  Martineau  is  very  positive 
that  Justin  Martyr  has  used  it  in  the  first  Apology,  c.  xxxv 
and  elsewhere,  and  if  that  is  the  case  then  c.  130  A.D. 
must  be  assigned  as  the  latest  date.  Other  indications 
tend  to  strengthen  such  a  conclusion.  The  tendency  is, 
therefore,  to  push  the  composition  far  back  towards  the 
first  quarter  of  the  second  century.  We  do  not  lay  stress 
on  this  earliest  date,  though  it  does  not  seem  unlikely. 

Now  this  newly  recovered  fragment  bears  very  closely 

on  our  problem.     We  have  incidentally  called  attention 

to  its  composite  character.     It  used  all 

„      ^^  ^         ,       the    gospels,    Luke    most    of    all,    then 
Fourtli  Gospel.  or?  j 

Matthew,  John,  and  Mark  in  the  order 
named.  In  some  of  these  cases  the  Greek  text  of  Peter 
and  John  is  very  close.  In  other  cases  the  idea  is  bor- 
rowed but  put  into  other  words.     Again  there  is  a  very 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  47 

evident  mingling  of  the  text  of  two  or  more  of  our  gospels. 
For  example,  at  the  end  of  the  fragment  the  author  has 
an  evident  allusion  to  John  xx.  lo,  xxi.  3  (and  Mark  ii. 
14).  Again,  the  Peter  gospel  says  that  the  Jews,  in  re- 
venge on  the  malefactor  who  is  represented  as  pleading  for 
Jesus,  demand  that  the  one  malefactor's  legs  be  broken, 
evidently  having  in  mind,  **And  they  brake  the  legs  of  the 
first"  (John  xix.  32).  So  when  the  fragment  has  to  do 
with  the  burial  of  Jesus,  it  locates  the  tomb  in  *' Joseph's 
garden^  Only  the  fourth  gospel  mentions  the  garden. 
It  also  makes  the  women  in  coming  to  the  sepulchre  stoop 
down  to  look  in,  probably  borrowing  this  from  John  xxv, 
where  Peter  stoops  down.  This  language  is  found  in  the 
cotnmon  text  of  Luke,  into  which  it  has  probably  crept 
from  a  marginal  reference  to  John.  So  too  the  fragment 
says  they  crucified  Jesus  ^^  in  the  midst, '^  that  they  clad 
him  with  purple  (here  from  John  xix.  2).  More  import- 
ant is  the  fact  that  the  false  Peter  misunderstood  John  xix. 
13,  understanding  the  verb  in  a  transitive  sense,  viz.,  that 
'' Pilate  brought  Jesus  forth  and  i'^?/ ///;// on  the  judgment 
seat." 

These  are  by  no  means  all  of  the  coincidences  with  the 
fourth  gospel.  Others  quite  as  remarkable  can  be  traced. 
Probably  enough  has  been  said  to  make  the  use  of  our 
gospel  evident.  For  those  who  wish  to  pursue  this  line 
of  investigation  nothing  has  yet  appeared  so  useful  as  Dr. 
H.  Von  Schubert's  Das  Petrusevangelium,  Berlin,  July,  ,' 
1893. 

What  we  are  principally  concerned  with  is  that,  what- 
ever be  the  final  conclusion  regarding  the  date  of  the 
Petrine  fragment,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  is  based  partly 


48  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

upon  the  Johannean  gospel.  We  must  also  note  that  the 
gospel  of  Peter  was  condemned  by  Serapion  on  the 
ground  that  it  favored  the  heresy  of  docetism,  distinct 
traces  of  which  the  fragment  is  considered  to  show,  though 
Dr.  McGifFert  strenuously  denies  that  taint  in  the  frag- 
ment so  lately  recovered. 

We  are  now  to  deal  with  a  class  of  citations,  the  aggre- 
gated weight  of  which  is  very  great  in 

Fourth    Gospel  ^-  ^l  ^-       -^  r       ^         r         ^ 

Used  by  suggestmg   the   antiquity  of   the   fourth 

Heretical  Sects,  gospel.  We  find  our  authority  for  these 
largely,  though  not  solely,  in  Irenaeus 
and  Hippolytus.  The  former  wrote  his  Against  Heresies 
sometime  prior  to  189.  In  that  he  cites  the  published 
works  of  heresiarchs  and  their  disciples.  Time  must  be 
allowed  for  the  circulation  of  these  works  for  them  to  have 
become  sufficiently  prominent  to  attract  his  notice,  situ- 
ated as  he  was,  at  an  outpost  of  the  church.  These  cited 
works  themselves  quote  the  fourth  gospel,  especially  on 
the  Logos,  quote  it  as  well  known.  What  then  is  the 
necessary  inference  regarding  the  age  of  that  gospel? 

The  other  authority  mentioned  above,  Hippolytus,  is 
no  less  important  for  our  purpose  than  Irenaeus  himself. 
In  fact,  the  former  was  a  disciple  of  the  latter.  Let  us 
remember  the  nexus  we  have  here,  binding  Hippolytus 
with  the  apostle  John.  It  will  add  somewhat  to  the  value 
of  the  former's  testimony.  Hippolytus  was  a  disciple  of 
Irenaeus,  Irenaeus  of  Polycarp,  and  Polycarp  of  John. 
Hippolytus  wrote,  among  other  works,  a  Commentary  on 
the  Apocalypse  and  Gospel  of  JoJui,  and,  which  is  our  im- 
mediate concern,  a  Refutation  of  all  Heresies.  This  lat- 
ter is  of  especial  value,  because  of  its  quotations  of  leaders 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  49 

of  heretical  sects,  who  based  their  systems  upon  the  John 
gospel. 

The  class  of  citations  to  which  we  refer,  then,  is  taken 
frc  heretical  writers.  Tiiese  may  be  divided  into  three 
types,  agreeing  with  the  schools  of  gnosticism.  We  sliall 
study  tlie  school  of  Marcion,  of  Valentinus,  and  of  Basi- 
lides. 

The  founder  of  the  first  of  these,  Mar- 
Marcion  .  ,  r  -n   i  a 

fl  A  D  130-165  cion,  a  contemporary  of  Polycarp,  flour- 
ished A.D.  130-165,  founding  in  Rome 
a  sect  which  thrived  for  a  century  and  left  its  traces  in 
church  life  as  late  as  the  tenth  century.  He  formed  a 
canon  of  his  own,  a  mutilated  gospel  of  Luke  and  ten 
Pauline  epistles.  The  other  gospels  and  the  rest  of  the 
New  Testament  writings  he  rejected,  not  because  of  any 
doubt  as  to  their  apostolicity,  but  because  they  were 
thought  by  him  to  lean  too  strongly  toward  Judaism,  to 
which  he  was  opposed,  or  because  he  considered  that  the 
writers  were  imperfectly  enlightened.  Both  Tertullian 
and  Irenccus  assume  that  he  knew  and 
ejec  e  ur  rejected  the  fourth  gospel  among  the 
rest,  and  not  a  single  uwi'd  has  come 
down  to  us  intimating  that  this  assumption  was  ever  chal- 
lenged. Tertullian  declares  in  plain  words,  though  the 
passage  is  too  long  to  be  quoted  here,  that  the  *' evangeli- 
cal instrument"  has  ''apostles"  and  "apostolic  men" 
as  its  authors,  whom  he  afterward  identifies  (and  notice 
the  pairing)  as  John  and  Matthew,  Luke  and  Mark.  He 
goes  on  to  say:  "Now  of  tlie  authors  whom  we  possess, 
Marcion  seemes  to  have  singled  out  Luke  for  his  mutila- 
ting process"   {Against  Marcion,  iv,  3).     In  his  work  on 


so  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

The  Flesh  of  Christ,  Chap,  iii,  Tertullian  returns  to  the 
charge  in  the  words:  ''If  you  [Marcion]  had  not  pur- 
posely REJECTED  in  some  instances  and  corrupted  in 
others,  the  Scriptures  opposed  to  your  opinion,  you  would 
have  been  confuted  by  the  gospel  of  John."  But  a  man 
cannot  "reject"  that  of  which  he  knows  nothing,  nor 
be  confuted  by  what  does  not  exist,  therefore  Marcion, 
according  to  Tertullian,  knew  our  gospel. 

Again  in  the  work  Against  Marcion,  iv, 

-,  , ^       "x,  Tertullian    remarks:    ''Marcion,  finding 

Gal.  11.  11-14.  .  >  fc) 

the  epistle  to  the  Galatians,  in  which  Paul 
accuses  the  apostles  themselves  of  not  walking  in  the 
truth  of  the  gospel  ....  strives  by  means  of  that  to 
destroy  confidence  in  the  gospels  which  are  published 
in  the  name  of  the  apostles,  and  also  of  apostolical 
men  .  .  .  .  "  Nothing  clearer  can  be  deducted  from 
this  than  that  Marcion  discredited  our  gospel,  especially 
when  it  is  remembered  whom  Tertullian  means  by  "apos- 
tles and  apostolical  men."  And  this  argues  the  existence 
of  John's  gospel  in  Marcion's  time,  for  Tertullian's 
Evangelical  Instrument  is  his  name  for  the  four  gospels. 

We  come  next  to  the   Valentinians,  in- 
The  . 

Valentinians       eluding  the    founder    Valentinus   (was  ac- 
tive 138-160  A.D.),  and  his  personal  dis- 
ciples, Heracleon  and  Ptolemgeus  (fl.  170-180  A.D.). 

In  our  study  of  this  period  we  have  to  be  continually  on 
A  Caution  °^^  guard  in  one  particular.  Our  authori- 
ties (Irenaeus,  Hippolytus,  Clement)  are 
expounding  the  system  of  the  Valentinians  and  Basilid- 
ians.  We  need  to  watch,  lest  we  mistake  a  quotation 
from  the  system  as  worked  out  for  a  personal  quotation, 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  5^ 

or  citation  of  the  founder  of  the  school.  There  are,  how- 
ever, sufficiently  clear  cases  of  personal  citation,  so  that 
we  need  feel  no  doubt  whatever  as  to  the  individual 
knowledge  of  our  gospel. 

Irenceus  gives  us,  in   his  writing  Against  Heresies,  i,  8, 
5,  an  exposition  by  the  Valentinians  of  part   of  the  pro- 
logue of  John's  gospel.     The  Latin  of  the  passage  ends 
with   the   words,    ''and   so   says   Ptole- 
Ptoiemseus.  maius,"  intimating    that   the  exegesis  is 

fl.  170-180  A.D.     ^^.^      j^^  ^^^^  ^^^^^^  chapter  is  a  quotation 

of  a  clause  of  John  xii.  27  :  "And  what  shall  I  say?" 
with  the  exegetical  addition:  ''I  know  not."  Epipha- 
nius  {Heresies,  xxxiii,  3-7)  has  preserved  a  letter  by 
Ptolemceus  to  Flora,  in  which  occurs  the  quotation  :  "All 
things  were  made  by  him,  and  without  him  was  not  any- 
thing made,"  with  the  formula,  "The  apostle  says." 
Here  is  a  /^r.fd7«^/ acceptance  of  the  gospel  by  PtolemcTeus. 
Heracleon,  another  disciple  of  Valen- 
Heracieon,  ^^^        -^  ^^^^^^^-^  to  have  written  a  com- 

fl.  150-160  A.D.  ,        r       .1  1       •«    fo^i- 

mentary  on  the  fourth  gospel— m  tact 
the  first  one  known— portions  of  which  have  been  pre- 
served for  us  by  Origen.  The  nature  of  the  exegesis 
proves  that  the  commentator  looked  on  the  text  as 
authoritative  and  inspired.  Quotations  here,  with  this 
undisputed  fact  before  us,  would  be  a  waste  of  space  and 
time.  One  important  fact  needs  to  be  recalled,  viz.,  that 
for  a  religious  book  to  become  the  text  of  a  commentary 
requires  that  it  should  be  considered  authoritative  and  of 
established  use  in  church.  But  at  the  time  of  Heracleon, 
the  fourth  gospel  occupied  so  eminent  a  position  as  to 
induce  him  to  comment  on  it,  and  yet  necessitated  his  so 


52  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

wresting  its  text  and  meaning  as  to  suggest  to  Origen  the 

task  of  refuting  him. 

Valentinus  (flourished  <:.  140  A. D,),  the 

«       i^r^  a't^      founder  of  this  school,  also  supplies  us  with 
fl.  c.  140  A.D.  ^^ 

evidence.    TertuUian  says  of  him  (^On  Pre- 
scription Against  Heretics,  cxxxviii) :   ''  For  although  Val- 
entinus seems  to  use  the  entire  instrument,  he  has  none 
the  less  laid  violent  hands  on  the  truth,  only  with  more 
cunning  mind  and  skill  than  Marcion.     Marcion  expressly 
....  used    the   knife,  not   the   pen  ....  Valentinus, 
however,  abstained  from  such  excision,  because  he  did  not 
invent  Scriptures  to  square  with  his  own  subject  matter, 
but  adapted  his  matter  to  the  Scriptures :  yet  he  took  away 
more,  and  added  more,  by  removing  the  proper  meaning 
....  and  adding  fantastic  arrangement  of  things  .  .  .  ." 
We   are   to   remember    that    TertuUian   uses   the   phrase 
''Evangelical   Instrument"    as   a  synonym  of  our  word 
''gospels."     So  Valentinus  used  these  entire,  did  not  mu- 
tilate them  as  did  Marcion.     That  Valentinus  used  the  gos- 
pel of  John  is  clear  from  Hippolytus  (^Refutation  of  all  Her- 
esies, vi,  30),  who  tells  us,  in  a/ifrj'i?/^^/ reference  to  Valen- 
tinus: ^^He  says  the  Saviour  observes  'all  that  came  before 
Me  are  thieves  and  robbers  '  "   (compare  John  x.  8).     In 
the  preceding  chapter  Hippolytus  says  that  Valentinus  calls 
the  devil   "The  ruler  of  this  world  "  (see  John  xii.  31, 
xvi.  2,  and  compare  xiv.  30).     In  these  passages  no  one 
who  had  not  a  theory  to  maintain  would  see  anything  but 
quotation  of  Valentinus  himself.     But  those  who  deny  the 
apostolicity  of  our  gospel  affirm  that  Hippolytus  refers  to 
the  school  of  Valentinians  and  not  to  the  master.     The 
sentence  before  the  one  containing  the  words  "the  ruler 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  53 

of  this  world"   begins,   ''The  quaternion  advocated  by 

Vaieniinus,'^  and  no  mention  of  his  school  intervenes. 

G.  Heinrici,  in  Germany,  has    in- 

^^    _  ,     ^,  ,  vestifjated  the  Valentinian  Gnosticism 

the  Valentinians.  ° 

in  relation  to  our  gospel  and  says : 
"  The  use  that  the  Valentinians  made  of  Scripture  proves 
that  the  gospel  of  John  and  [certain]  epistles  ....  were 
acknowledged  writings,  and  already  employed  as  apostolic 
writings  in  the  first  half  of  the  second  century." 

Our  last  representative  of  Gnosticism  is 
A  T^  ac^^oc^r,     Basilides,  who  is  reckoned  to   have  lived 

A.D.  oo-loO? 

AD.  65-135,  and  to  have  written  c.  125 
A.D.  a  commentary  on  '*  the  Gospel  "  which  may  or  may 
not  mean  the  same  as  Tertullian's  ''Evangelical  Instru- 
ment." Exactly  what  this  commentary  was  critics  do  not 
agree  in  defining.  Hippolytus  informs  us  that  Basilides 
claimed  to  be  a  disciple  of  Matthias,  wlio  was  chosen  in 
the  place  of  Judas  Iscariot,  and  Epiphanius  gives  us  infor- 
mation that  tends  to  corroborate  this  when  he  says  that 
Basilides  taught  at  Antioch  (one  supposed  scene  of  Mat- 
thias' activity)  before  he  went  to  Alexandria. 

Here  again  the  adverse  critics  attempt  to  discount  Hip- 
polytus by  saying  that  he  confuses  the  master  with   his 

school.     But  so  careful  a  critic  as  Mat- 
Matthew  Arnold     ^1  .        ,  ,  ,  ,     ,        _       _ 
on  Basilides.            ^'^^^^   Arnold,    endorsed    by    Dr.    Ezra 

Abbot,  has  said,  "It  is  not  true  that 
he  [Hippolytus]  wields  the  subjectless  '  he  says '  in  the 
random  manner  alleged  [confusing  master  and  school], 
with  no  other  formula  for  quotation  both  from  the  master 
and  from  the  followers.  In  general,  he  uses  the  formula 
'according  to  them  '  when  he  quotes  from  the  school,  and 


/ 


54  THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

the  formula  '  he  says '  when  he  gives  the  dicta  of  the 
master.  And  in  this  particular  case  [referring  to  the  quo- 
tations we  shall  adduce]  he  manifestly  quotes  the  dicta  of 
Basilides,  and  no  one  who  had  not  a  theory  to  serve  would 
ever  dream  of  doubting  it.     Basilides,  therefore,  about  the 

year  1 25  of  our  era,  had  before  him  the 
Fourth^G^sp^el      ^°"^^^^  gospel. ' '     Matthew  Arnold,  there, 

is  referring  to  two  passages  from  Hippo- 
lytus'  Refutation  of  all  Heresies,  vii,  10:  ''and  this,  he 
says,  is  that  which  has  been  stated  in  the  Gospels :  '  He 
was  the  true  light,  which  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh 
into  the  world:'"  The  other  passage  is  chapter  fifteen 
of  the  same  book,  where  we  find,  "And  that  each  thing, 
he  says,  has  its  own  particular  times,  the  Saviour  is  a  suffi- 
cient (witness)  when  he  observes,  'Mine  hour  is  not  yet 
come'"  (see  John  li.  4).  (The  reader  is  referred  to  an 
able  discussion,  on  the  quotation  of  Basilides  in  Hippo- 
lytus'  work,  by  Dr.  James  Drummond,  published  in  the 
Journal  of  Biblical  Literature,  Vol.  xi.  Part  ii,  1892.) 

Dr.  Ezra  Abbot,  known  as  a  most 
Dr.  Abbot  on  ^^jj.  student,  concludes  his  investiga- 
Gnostic  Use  of        .  _  ,;  ,,t        •  r     n     , 

Fourth  Gospel       tions   as   follows:    "In  view  of  all  the 

evidence,  then,  I  think  we  have  good 
reason  for  believing  that  the  gospel  of  John  was  one  of  a 
collection  of  gospels,  probably  embracing  our  four,  which 
Basilides  and  his  followers  received  as  authoritative  about 
the  year  125." 

Concerning  the  use  of  our  gospel  by  the  Gnostics  no 
better  statement  has  been  formulated  than  Dr.  Ezra  Ab- 
bot's. "The  use  of  the  gospel  of  John  by  the  Gnostic 
sects,  in  the  second  century,  affords  a  strong,  it  may  seem 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  55 

decisive,  argument  for  its  genuineness.  However  ingeni- 
ously they  might  pervert  its  meaning,  it  is  obvious  .... 
that  this  gospel  is  ...  .  diametrically  opposed  to  the 
essential  principles  of  Gnosticism.    The  Christian  Fathers, 

in   their   contests  with  the  Gnostics, 

Gospel  could  not        r        j    ,.  c  o      i 

^  ^  ^  ,  found  It  an  armory  of  weapons.  Such 
have  been  forged.  ^  •'  '■ 

being  the  case,  let  us  suppose  it  to 
have  been  forged  about  the  middle  of  the  second  century, 
in  the  heat  of  the  Gnostic  controversy.  It  was  thus  a 
book  which  the  founders  of  the  Gnostic  sects,  who  flour- 
ished ten,  twenty,  or  thirty  years  before,  had  never  heard 
of.  How  .  .  .  .  ,  then,  explain  the  fact  that  their  fol- 
lowers should  not  only  have  received  it,  but  have  received 
it,  so  far  as  appears,  without  question  or  discussion  ?  It 
must  have  been  received  by  the  founders  of  these  sects 
from  the  beginning  ....  But  if  received  by  the 
founders  of  these  sects,  it  must  have  been  received  at  the 
same  time  by  the  Catholic  Christians.  They  would  not  at 
a  later  period  have  taken  the  spurious  work  from  the  here- 
tics with  whom  they  were  in  controversy.  It  was  then 
generally  received  both  by  Gnostics  and  their  opponents, 
between  the  years  120  and  130.  What  follows?  It  fol- 
lows that  the  Gnostics  of  that  date  received  it  because 
they  could  not  help  it.  They  would  not  have  admitted  the 
authority  of  a  book  which  could  be  reconciled  with  their 
doctrines  only  by  the  most  forced  interpretation,  if  they 
could  have  destroyed  its  authority  by  denying  its  genuine- 
ness, [and]  its  genuineness  could  then  be 

Its  Genuineness    easily  ascertained The  fact  of  the 

Conclusive.  ^  , 

reception  of  the  fourth  gospel  as  [John  sj 

work  at  so  early  a  date,  by  parties  so  violently  opposed  to 


56  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

each  other  [as  the  Gnostics  and  Cathohc  Christians], 
proves  that  the  evidence  of  its  genuineness  was  conclu- 
sive." 

The  citations  by  Hippolytus  of  quotations  of  John  by 
the  Ophites  and  Peratae  are  not  so  decisive  as  to  require 
their  production  here. 


CHAPTER   Vll. 

The  Alogi  and  the  Appendix  to  the  Gospel. 

There  remain  yet  two  witnesses  to  the  an- 

The  Alogi.    tiquity  of  the  fourth  gospel.     We  have  already 

referred    (Chap,    i)   to    a   party   in    the   early 

church  who  denied  the  apostolicity  of  the  fourth  gospel. 

Irenaeus  tells  us  of  ''vain,  unlearned  and  audacious"  men 

''  who  represent  the  aspects  of  the  gospel  as 

Mentioned  i     •  -^.1  i        .1  r 

^    ^  beiner  either  more  in  number  than  as  afore- 

by  Irenesus,  ° 

said,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  fewer  .  .  .  ., 
others  .  .  .  .,  that  they  may  set  at  nauglit  the  gift  of  the 
Spirit  .  .  .  .,  do  not  admit  that  aspect  presented  by 
John's  gospel,  in  which  the  Lord  promised  that  he  would 
send  the  Paraclete  ;  but  set  aside  at  once  both  the  gospel 

and  the  prophetic  spirit"  {Against  Here- 
.  sieSy  iii,  11,  9).     It  is  believed  that  Epiph- 

anius  refers  to  the  same  party  in  his 
Hccresies,  li,  3,  where  he  nicknames  them  Alogi  (that  is, 
''  those  who  deny  the  Logos,"  or  "those  without  reason," 
for  he  intends  a  pun),  and  says,  ''For  they  hold  that  so- 
called  heresy  which  rejects  the  books  of  John.  Since 
then  they  do  not  receive  the  Logos  which  was  preached 
by  John,  they  shall  be  called  'Alogi.'  "  That  is  they  are 
represented  as  rejecting  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos  and  the 
writings  of  St.  John.     According  to  Irenaeus  they  rejected 

57 


58  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

the  doctrine  of  the  Paraclete  and  of  the  accompanying 
gift  of  prophecy.  These  two  allusions  are  all  we  have  to 
this  obscure  party  in  the  church,  though  we  are  sure  that 
Epiphanius  gets  his  information  from  a  lost  work  of 
Hippolytus.  It  might  seem  at  first  sight 
This  Testimony      ^^^^  ^|^-g  (j^nial  of  the  genuineness  of  our 

Adverse.  gospel   by  a   party  in    the  early  church 

would   militate   against    our  contention. 

But  we  must  not  forget  that  all  we  are  attempting  now 

is    to    show   the   antiquity   of    the   fourth 
Really  not  so.  , 

gospel. 

There  are  therefore  two  points  of  interest  in  this  denial 
by  the  Alogi :  i.  That  they  were  actuated  by  dogmatic 
motives,  that  they  rejected  the  authorship  of  John  in 
order  to  get  rid  of  the  gospel  which  made  untenable  their 
own  views;  2.  Though  they  denied  the  genuineness  of 
the  gospel,  they  attributed  its  composition  to  Cerinthus,  a 
heretic  of  the  first  century  and  a  contemporary  of  the  Apos- 
tle John.  These  very  people  then,  instead  of  contributing 
something  of  value  to  those  who  deny  the  genuineness  of 
our  gospel,  become  witnesses  for  its  antiquity.  And  bear- 
ing in  mind  what  has  already  been  said  regarding  the 
acceptance  of  the  fourth  gospel  by  heretics  and  orthodox, 
and  also  the  further  fact  that  the  position  of  the  Alogi  was 
almost  instantly  assailed,  their  testimony  is  particularly 
weighty. 

Probably  the  earliest  testimony  we  have  to  the  antiquity 
of  the  gospel  is  found  in  the  gospel  itself.  We  must  not 
be  misunderstood  here  as  referring  to  internal  testimony. 
It  can  with  no  more  correctness  be  called  internal  evi- 
dence than  can  the  story  of  Moses'  death  and  burial  be 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  59 

called   internal    evidence    of    Moses'    authorship   of   the 

Pentateuch.     This  evidence  is  found  in 
Conclusion  of  ^1      ^         ^     r       .1  1  ,-r. 

the  Gospel  an         ^^'^  twenty-fourth  and  twenty-fifth  verses 

Attestation.  of    the    last    chapter   of  John's    gospel 

and     reads:     "This     is     that     disciple 

which  beareth  witness  of  these  things,    and    wrote   these 

things:  and  we  know  that  his  witness  is  true.     And  there 

are  also  many  other  things  which  Jesus  did,  the  which,  if 

they  should  be  written  every  one,  I  suppose  that  even  the 

world  itself  would  not  contain  the  books  that  should  be 

written." 

Concerning  this   we  notice  first,  that 

Characteristics.  ^^'^  ^^^^^  ^^  ^^'^^^"^g  ^^  changed,  all  that 
precedes  has  been  told  in  the  third  per- 
son;  here  we  find  the  first  person  "we"  and  "1"; 
second,  the  twenty-fourth  verse  is  an  identification  of  the 
author  of  the  book  with  the  disciple  of  whom  Jesus  said, 
"  If  I  will  that  he  tarry  till  I  come,  what  is  that  to  thee?  " 
We  shall  see  that  later  generations  believed  this  to  be  said 
of  John,  and  believed  it  so  persistently  that  a  story  got 
abroad  that  John  did  not  die  but  simply  went  to  sleep  in 
his  grave,  and  that  the  earth  over  him  was  disturbed  by 
his  breathing. 

The  self-evident  conclusion  is  that  these 
Its  Source.  verses  were  not  written  by  the  author  of  the 
gospel,  and  that  we  have  here  an  attesta- 
tion either  real  or  forged.  If  it  is  real  the  likeHest 
hypothesis  is  that  it  is  by  those  to  whom  the  gospel  was 
first  given,  i.e.,  the  church  of  Ephesus.  Then  the  seal  of 
approval  would  be  given  by  the  cluirch,  and  particularly 
by  the  elder  in  charge  after  John's  death  in  the  name  of  the 


6o  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

church.  This  is  Mr.  Norton's  suggestion,  and  it  has  met 
the  approval  of  all  but  negative  critics.  If  this  be  the 
case,  we  have  a  contemporary  endorsal  of  the  book  and 
its  writer. 

On  the  supposition  that  the  attestation  is  a 
Not  a  .  ^       V.  *  ,  , 

Forg-ery.       forgery,   Dr.    Ezra  Abbot  has   the  following: 

''  Suppose  the  gospel  written  by  an  anonymous 
forger  of  the  middle  of  the  second  century.  What  possi- 
ble credit  could  he  suppose  would  be  given  to  it  by  an 
anonymous  attestation  like  this?  A  forger  with  such  a 
purpose  would  have  named  his  pretended  authority,  and 
have  represented  the  attestation  as  formally  and  solemnly 
given.  The  attestation  as  it  stands,  clearly  presupposes 
that  the  author  ....  was  known  to  those  who  first 
received  the  copy  of  the  gospel  containing  it."  Dr. 
Abbot  makes  the  suggestion,  the  probability  of  which  is 
evident  at  once  to  every  student  of  New  Testament  manu- 
scripts, that  the  endorsement  was  probably  at  first  written 
separate  from  the  text  or  on  the  margin,  and  afterwards 
incorporated  with  the  text— a  process  exceedingly  com- 
mon in  the  manuscripts  which  have  come  down  to  us. 

We  have  now  summarized  the  external  evi- 
Summary.        ,  r        i  .      .        .    ,       ^        , 

aence  tor  the  anUqinty  of  the  fourth  gospel. 

We  have  traced  its  employment  from  the  last  third  of  the 

second  century,  when  it  was  in  use  alongside  of  the  other 

gospels,  East,  West  and  South,  back  to  the  first  quarter  of 

the  century.     We  have  found    it  used  as 

Fourth  Gospel    apostolic  by  orthodox  and  heterodox,  by 

not  Later  than    >^    ,     ,.      ^,    .    . 

First  Century.     Catholic  Christians   and  by  Gnostics,    by 

Montanists  and  Docetists,  and  appealed  to 

by  all  parties  in  support  of  their  peculiar  doctrines.    By  no 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  6l 

means  all  of  the  testimony  possible  has  been  adduced.  We 
have  not  even  touched  on  the  possible  testimony  of  Papias 
and  Polycarp,  as  that  testimony  is  yet  most  strenuously 
disputed.  But  when  we  find  that  within  thirty  years  of 
the  time  of  John's  death  this  gospel  is  used  by  Gnostics, 
during  the  lifetime  of  Papias,  and  of  Polycarp,  and  of 
hundreds  of  others  who  knew  John,  and  within  a  few  years 
of  this  by  Justin  Martyr,  who  belonged  to  the  orthodox, 
we  see  how  impossible  becomes  the  hypothesis  that  it  could 
have  been  written  much,  if  at  all,  subsequent  to  the  first 
century,  that  is,  it  must  have  appeared  at  least  as  early  as 
the  time  at  which  tradition  tells  us  John  died. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
The  Author. 

„    ,    ^  .   .  If  in  the  preceding  chapters  our  facts  are 

Early  Origrin  ■■  •  i      , 

of  our  Gospel.  ^"^^  ^'^^  °^'  reasoning  good,  the  gospel  is 
shown  to  have  been  in  circulation  at  a  time 
very  close  to  what  tradition  assigns  as  the  date  of  the  death 
of  John.  We  have  seen  it  to  be  improbable,  if  not  impos- 
sible, that  a  forgery  could  have  gained  currency  at  so  early 
a  date ;  that  Gnostics  would  not  have  received  a  book 
which  ran  counter  to  their  theories  if  its  apostolicity  had 
not  been  known,  and  that  the  orthodox  would  not  have 
accepted  one  which  their  opponents  used  unless  it  were  be- 
lieved genuine.  The  argument  thus  far,  then,  implies  the 
authorship  of  John,  but  only  upon  the  supposition  that 

John  lived  till  near  the  close  of  the  first 
John's  Residence  ,       .  ,      , 

atEphesus  century,   and  with  the  implication  that 

his  home  was  in  Ephesus.     Since  both 

these  facts   have    ''for  dogmatic  reasons"  been   denied, 

it  will  be  necessary  to  see  what  the  evidence    is    for  (i) 

John's  survival,  (2)  in  Ephesus,  (3)  till  near  the  beginning 

of  the  second  century.     We  are  to  bear  in  mind  that  the 

reason  for  denying  the  Ephesian  residence  of  John  is  that  it 

would  be  impossible  to  account  for  the  re- 
questioned.  .      . 

cognized  currency  of  a  gospel  composed  by 

him  in  proconsular  Asia  so  early  as  has  been  proved  on 

62 


THE    JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  63 

grounds  other  than  its  genuineness  if  John  lived  in  Ephesus. 
People  would  at  once  have  declared  it  spurious,  or,  at 
least,  would  have  questioned  its  genuineness,  a  thing  of 
which  we  have  no  trace  till  we  meet  the  Alogi,  whose 
contention  was  at  once  challenged  and  afterwards  ridiculed. 
Now  Irenseus  {Against  Heresies,  iii,  3,  4),  in  speaking  of 
the  preservation  of  ecclesiastical  tradi- 
Evidence  of  ^j^j^  ^^  gwtw  by  the  apostles,  has  the  fol- 

fl  174-189  A  D  lo^^'i'ife  :  '*  The  church  in  Ephesus, 
founded  by  Paul,  and  having  John  re- 
maining among  them  permanently  //;////  the  times  of 
Trajan  [98-117  A.D.],  is  a  true  witness  of  the  tradition 
of  the  apostles."  In  the  same  chapter  he  relates  that 
*' John,  the  disciple  of  the  Lord,  rushed  out  of  the  bath- 
house without  bathing,  exclaiming,  'Let  us  fly,  lest  evei\ 
the  bath-liouse  iA\  down,  because  Cerinthus,  the  enemy  of 
the  truth,  is  within.'  "  And  this  story  is  given  on  the 
authority  of  Polycarp.  So  in  the  same  work,  iii,  i,  1, 
Irenneus  says,  "Afterwards,  John,  the  disciple  of  the  Lord, 
who  also  leaned  upon  his  breast,  did  himself  publisli  a 
gospel  during  his  residence  at  Ephesus  in  Asia."  Quota- 
tions from  Irenaeus  to  this  purport  might  be  multiplied 
almost  indefinitely. 

According   to  Euscbius  {Hist.  EccL,    v, 

^°.J?"^^^'        18),  Apollonius  relates  that  ''a  dead  man 
c.  iiOO  A.D.  : 

was   raised    by  the    divine   power,  through 

the  same  John  [as  wrote  the  Apocalypse]  at  Ephesus." 

Tlie  same  writer  tells  us  (Hist.  Ecc/.,  v, 
Polvcrates 
c.  190  A.D.'        ^4)  that  Polycrates  of  Ephesus  wrote  in  a 

letter  to  Victor  of  Rome  that  ''John,  who 

rested  on  the   bosom   of  the   Lord  .   .   .   .,   is  buried    in 


64  THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

Ephesus,"   and  we  may  naturally  deduce  from  this  that 
John  lived  in  Ephesus. 

Clement    of    Alexandria,    in    chapter 
Clement  of  forty-two   of  his   Salvatioji  of  the   Rich 

fl  190-203  A  D  ^^^^j  implies  the  residence  of  the  apostle 
John  at  Ephesus,  using  such  expressions 
as,  *'  For  when,  on  the  tyrant's  death,  he  [John]  returned 
to  Ephesus  from  the  isle  of  Patmos,"  *'and  he  set  out  for 
Ephesus,"  showing  knowledge  of  a  tradition  that  the  city 
of  Diana  was  the  home  of  the  apostle. 

Justin  Martyr,  who  held  in  Ephesus  a 

j?^J"*  ^^^  ^^'    discussion  with  Trypho,  a  Tew,  says  in  the 
tl66A.D.  ■' ^       T      J       ■>      J 

course  of  the  debate,  "  A  man  among  us, 
one  of  the  apostles  of  Christ,  has  prophesied  in  the  Reve- 
lation which  was  given  to  him."  The  most  natural  inter- 
pretation of  this  passage  is  that  the  words  "  among  us  " 
mark  the  place  as  Ephesus. 

Certainly  it  is  John  the  Apostle  who  is  referred  to  here, 
for  we  know  that  the  Apocalypse  was  generally  attributed 
to  him  by  the  early  church,  as  witness  the  reference  in 
Irenseus  {Against  Heresies,  v,  30,  i),  *'  That  number 
[666]  being  found  in  all  accurate  copies  [of  the  i^poc- 
alypse],  and  those  men  who  saw  John  face  to  face  bear- 
ing testimony  to  it " 

The  Martyr  Polycarp  bears  testimony  to 
70-i55^AD  ^^^^  presence  of  John  in  Asia  Minor. 
Irenseus  refers  to  this  (see  Eusebius,  Hist. 
EccL,  V,  24)  when  he  writes  to  Florinus,  *' And  I  could 
still  show  thee  the  place  where  he  sat  when  he  taught,  and 
gave  an  account  of  his  relations  with  John  and  with  the 
others  who  had  seen  the  Lord."     So  later,  when  Polycarp 


THE   JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM.  65 

visited  Rome  he  had  a  discussion  with  tlie  Roman  bishop 
Anicetus  concerning  the  observation  of  the  Christian  pass- 
over  on  14th  Nisan,  and  Polycarp  refused  to  give  way, 
"seeing  that  he  had  always  observed  it  with  John  the  dis- 
ciple of  the  Lord,  and  the  rest  of  the  disciples,  with  whom 
he  associated  "  (Eusebius,  Hist.  Ecci.,  v,  24).  The 
weight  of  this  testimony  seems  the  greater  if  we  remember 
that  Polycarp  was  bishop  of  the  church  at  Smyrna,  only 
forty  miles  away  from  Ephesus. 

Ignatius,  thought  to  have  been  a  dis- 

^^^^!^^\  T^  ciple  of  John,  may  refer  to  this  when  in 

30  9-108  A.D.  *  J  ^         J 

his  letter  to  the  Ephesians  (Chap,  xi), 
he  writes  of  ''  the  Christians  who  have  always  had  inter- 
course with  the  apostles  .  .  .  .  ,  with  Paul,  and  John,  and 
Timothy."  This  last  piece  of  evidence  may  have  to  be 
qualified,  as  the  words  ''with  Paul,  and  John,  etc.,"  be- 
long to  the  longer  recension  of  the  Ignatian  epistles. 

Confirmatory   evidence   of    John's    resi- 
dence in  Asia  Minor  is  found  in  his  well- 
Indications. 

known  solicitude  for  the  churches  there  as 
shown  in  the  messages  to  the  seven  churches.  The 
legends  which  grew  up  in  after-years  also  imply  an  Ephe- 
sian  residence,  notably  that  of  the  young  men  of  Ephesus 
who  sold  their  goods  and  gave  away  the  proceeds,  under 
John's  direction.  They  then  regretted  their  action,  when 
John  told  them  to  gather  sticks  and  stones,  which  he  then 
turned  into  gold  and  gems,  reproaching  the  young  men 
for  their  apostasy.  They  soon  repented,  when  the  gold 
and  precious  stones  reverted  to  their  original  form. 

In   fact,  wliatever  mention  we   have  of  John  invariably 
finds  its  easiest  and  most  natural  interpretation  on  the  sup- 


66  THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

position  that  he  lived  in  Ephesus.     Any  other  explanation 

plunges  us  at  once  into  difficulties. 

The  evidence  as  to  the  death  of  John 

,  ^  ^.  ^^     ^■,       ao:rees  in  placing  it  near  the  close  of  the  first 
John's  Death.        o  i  & 

century.  Jerome  says  that  he  died  sixty- 
eight  years  after  the  Passion,  /.  ^.,  about  loo  A.D.  Irenaeus 
says  that  he  lived  till  Trajan's  accession  (98  A.D.),  and 
Suidas  makes  him  live  to  the  age  of  120.  The  only  way 
to  get  rid  of  this  testimony  is  to  deny  it  absolutely  or  to 
"explain  it  away."  We  see  no  reason  for  either  process, 
and  so  prefer  to  accept  the  evidence. 

We  have  therefore   brought   the  apostle 
A  th  Joh^  ^^^^  ^^^  gospel  of  John  into  close  re- 

lationship. Is  there  any  direct  testimony 
connecting  him  with  the  gospel  which  goes  by  his 
name?  Undoubtedly  there  is.  And  here  again  we  fall 
back  on  Irenaeus,  who  is,  in  all  matters  concerning  the 
external  testimony  for  the  fourth  gospel,  the  mark  be- 
tween flood  and  ebb.  We  have  already  quoted  in  this 
chapter  one  passage  in  which  this  fa- 
Asserted  by  |.|-^gj.   staj-gg   that    John   wrote   a    gospel 

fl  174-189  A  D  while  in  Asia.  Another  passage  is 
found  in  the  same  work.  Against  Her- 
esies, iii,  II,  8,  ''For  that  [gospel]  according  to  John 
relates  [Christ's]  original,  effectual,  and  glorious  genera- 
tion from  the  Father,  thus  declaring,  '  In  the  beginning 
was  the  Word,  and  the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word 
was  God.'  "  We  shall  not  adduce  the  testimony  of 
fathers  later  than  Irenaeus,  as  a  glance  at  the  indices  of 
good  editions  of  their  works  will  show  how  numerous  are 
the  ascriptions  of  our  gospel  to  John  from  Irenaeus  on. 


THE  JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  67 

For  our  next  witness  we  need  only  refer 

,,'^,a!^  a  t^  our  readers  to  the  third  chapter  of  this 
II0-I88  A.D.  ^ 

book,  where  we  have  cited  a  quotation  by 

Thcophilus  of  Antioch  in  his  To  Autolycus,  ''And   hence 

the  holy  writings  teach  us,  and  all  the  spirit-bearing  men, 

one  of  whom,  John,  says,  'In  the  beginning,'  etc." 

The  Muratorian  fragment,  the  date 
Muratorian  Frag-  r      ^  •   ^  1  11 

ment   date?  which,  as  we  have  seen,  has  been 

usually  put  about  170  A.D.,  is  explicit 

in  its  statement :   "  The  fourth  gospel  is  that  of  John,  one 

of  the  disciples."     The  question  as  to  the  date  of  this 

fragment  may  have  to   be  reexamined,   but   there    is  no 

weighty  reason  to  militate  against  the  accepted  date. 

Another  piece  of  evidence  is  found  in  the  title  of  our 

gospel  "Accordini^  to  John."     This  title 
The  Title.  .         .  . 

is  evidently  of  very  ancient  origin,  for  it  is 

found  in  every  Greek  manuscript  and  version.  It  is  uni- 
form with  the  titles  of  the  other  gospels,  and  points  to  the 
time  when  the  "Evangelical  Instrument"  was  first  put 
into  canonical  use.  It  expresses  the  sense  of  the  church 
at  some  time  prior  to  Justin  Martyr,  who  uses  the  expres- 
sion, "the  memoirs  which  are  called  gospels,"  /.  e.,  some 
time  prior  at  least  to  145  A.D.,  perhaps  prior  to  138. 

Irenaeus,  in  his  work,  Against  Hcre- 
Valentinians,  .        .     _  ,  ,       ,r  1       •    • 

^   jr^Q  sies,  1,  8,  5,  says  that  the  Valentmians 

"teach  that  John,  the  disciple  of  the 
Lord,  indicated  the  first  Ogdoad,  expressing  themselves  in 
these  words:  'John,  the  disciple  of  the  Lord,  wishing  to 
set  forth  the  origin  of  all  things,'  etc." 

Heracleon,  who  wrote  the  first  commentary  on  our  gos- 
pel, certainly  attributed  it  to  John,  as  Origen's  refutation 


68  THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

of  his  exegesis  undoubtedly  implies,  and  Ptolemaeus  quoted 
the  gospel  with  the  introduction,  ''The  apostle  declares." 
But  the  fourth  gospel  was  attributed  to  no  other  of  the 
apostles  than  John. 

The  foregoing  are  the  explicit,  external  witnesses  to  the 
Johannean  authorship  of  our  gospel.  Other  implicit  tes- 
timony is  available,  but  on  that  given  above  we  are  con- 
tent to  rest  our  case,  yet  it  must  be  acknowledged  that 
the  earliest  explicit  ascription  of  the  gospel  to  John  is  late 
in  the  second  century. 

Having  now  examined  the  witnesses  outside  the  gospel 
itself,  it  behooves  us  to  see  whether  the  indications  which 
we  find  within  the  gospel  agree  with  and  support  what  is 
unmistakably  the  tenor  of  the  external  testimony. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
Internal  Evidence  to  the  Date. 

We  have  seen    that  our  witnesses  re- 

n  iq^i  y  quire  an  early  date  for  the  fourth  gospel. 

Fourth  Gospel.        ^  ^  °     ^ 

Also  that  Irenaeus  states  that  it  was  com- 
posed after  the  Synoptic  gospels.  We  have  passed  in  review 
the  tradition  of  the  church,  uniform  and  consonant,  to  the 
effect  that  John  lived  liis  last  years,  in  Ephesus,  to  a  great 
age.  Now  if  that  be  the  case,  we  may  look  for  traces  of 
these  things  in  the  gospel  itself,  if  it  be  written  by  John. 
If  the  gospel  were  not  composed  at  the 

^  ^.     ^.  close  of  the  first  century,  let  us  suppose  a 

Indications.  ■"  ^  ^ 

date  about  140  A.D.  for  its  composition. 
There  were  then,  as  burning  questions,  several  subjects  of 
debate  on  which  a  writer  of  that  period  could  hardly  have 
refrained  from  touching.  These  were,  first,  the  episco- 
pate, so  strongly  brought  out  in  the  Ignatian  epistles,  and 
for  which  John  xx.  22,  23  is  an  inadequate 
basis.  Second,  the  Gnostic  theory  of  eman- 
ations: the  Gnostics  did  not  see  that  the  prologue  to  the 
gospel  met  this.  As  Bishop  Lightfoot  says :  *'It  is  only 
by  abstruse  reasoning  that  we  reach  this."  Third,  tlie 
Paschal  controversy.  Lightfoot's  remark  on  this  is  as  fol- 
lows :  "  Any  adventurer  who  dared  to  forge  a  whole  gos- 
pel would  not  be  deterred  by  any  scruple  from  setting  the 

69 


^0  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

controversy  at  rest  with  a  few  strokes  of  his  pen/*  Now 
it  is  significant  that  our  gospel  is  silent  as  to  these  points, 
or,  if  not  silent,  whatever  it  has  to  say  on  them  is  indirect, 
inferential,  has  to  be  deduced  by  a  process  of  ratiocination. 
The  fact  that  the  gospel  so  early  went  under  John's  name 
is  an  indication  that  it  was  first  published  with  his  impri- 
matur. If  he  did  not  write  it,  then  it  was  forged.  But  a 
forger  could  hardly  have  resisted  the  temptation  to  decide 
these  questions  under  cover  of  apostolic  authority.  That 
nothing  of  this  appears  in  the  gospel  is,  so  far,  an  indica- 
tion of  its  great  age.     Its  omissions  mark  its  antiquity. 

Again,  Irenseus  (^Against  Heresies,  iii,   ii, 

Cerinthus  ^)  ^^^^^  ^^  ^^^^^  Jo^ii  aimed  by  his  gospel  to 
refute  Cerinthus  and  the  Nicolaitans  who 
taught  that  God  the  Father  and  God  the  Creator  were 
two,  the  latter  inferior  to  the  former.  Now  Cerinthus  was 
probably  an  Alexandrian  proselyte,  who 
but  not  ^^^     ^^^gj^  j^^j^   Q^  ^l^g  ^'Alexandrian 

Explicitly,  later  r    t  j      .  •        > ,       a 

Gnosticism.  ^yP^  ^^    Logos   doctrine.        A    cursory 

reading  of  the  prologue  shows  how  com- 
pletely John  has  met  this  form  of  heresy  by  identifying 
the  Logos  and  God. 

And  the  story  of  John's  meeting  Cerinthus  at  the  bath 
indicates  (i)  the  abhorrence  of  John  for  that  heretic  ;  (2) 
the  existence  of  both  at  the  same  time  in  Ephesus,  and 
(3)  the  probability  that  John  would  combat  the  form  of 
error  which  Cerinthus  was  preaching.  But  the  teaching 
of  John  does  not,  as  before  said,  explicitly  deal  with  the 
Gnostic  emanations,  therefore  the  type  of  Gnosticism 
which  it  contests  is  incipient,  not  developed.  How  well 
all  this  fits  in  with  the  hypothesis  of  an  early  date ! 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  71 

While  the  fourth  gospel  is  declared  to 

Early  Date  Sug-    j,^^^  ^^^^^    written  subsequently    to    the 

gested  by  Type                    .                ,  i  •        i      i         •            n 

of  its  Teaching,     synoptics,    and    to  this    declaration    all 

criticism  gives  assent,  it  must  be  affirmetl 
that  it  could  not  have  been  very  long  after  them.  For  it 
still  moves,  professedly  and  evidentially,  in  the  apostolic 
circle.  There  is  in  John  not  an  iota  of  the  silly  legendary 
stuff  which  so  abounds  in  the  Ai)ocryphal  gospels.  And 
when  we  note  in  the  fragment  of  the  Peter  gospel,  wliich 
may  date  as  early  as  130  A.D.,  evident  traces  of  the 
legendary  and  absurd,  and  compare  the  sober  realm  in 
which  our  gospel  lives,  containing  as  it  does  not  a  single 
event  which  might  not  equally  well,  so  far  as  consonance 

of  ideas  and  of  character  goes,  be  found 
and  Miracles.        in  the  three  synoptic  gospels,  we  see  at 

once  how  this  proclaims  a  high  antiquity 
for  the  John  gospel.  Its  agreement  with  the  synop- 
tic gospels  and  differences  from  the  Apocryphal  gos- 
pels, in  the  type  of  its  teachings  and  particularly  of 
its  miracles,  evinces  a  similarity  in  origin  (and,  there- 
fore, of  date)  with  the  former,  and  a  disparity  with  the 
latter. 

Another  testimony  to  the  gospel's  great 
s  1  erary  ^^^  .^  ^j^^  vigor  and  freshness  of  its  style. 
The  apostolic  and  subapostolic  literature  is 
feeble  in  style  and  is  i)ietistic,  has  not  an  independent 
ring.  One  of  the  writers  on  our  topic  has  said  tliat  we 
should  have  to  come  down  to  the  fourth  century  before  we 
could  find  a  man  able  to  construct  the  discourses  of  John. 
If  there  had  been  in  the  second  century  a  man  capable  of 
such  writing,  he  could   not  have  been  lost.     '*  No  man 


72  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

could  have  written  thus  unless  he  were  consciously  the  re- 
porter of  one  immeasurably  his  superior." 

The  book  claims  to  be  written  by  an  eyewitness  of  the 

facts  related.  We  have  not  here  to  bring 
Eyewitness.      ^oi"ward  the  proofs  in   the  gospel  that  this 

claim  is  true.  They  belong  in  a  little 
lower  place  in  our  array  of  evidence.  If  the  events  de- 
scribed, the  discourses  retold,  were  seen  and  heard  by  an 
eyewitness,  then,  in  truth,  the  date  of  the  book  is  in  the 
first  century.  And  to  this  conclusion  all  the  indications 
we  have  mentioned  point,  and,  indeed,  seem  to  admit  no 
other. 


CHAPTER  X. 
The  Author.     Internal  Evidence. 

There   are  certain    indications,   evidently  not   inserted 
with  the  purpose  of  guiding  to  any  con(  hi- 
The  Author      ^.^^^    indications  which,  like  the  flashing  of 
a  Jew.  .        ,  ,,.,,, 

an  eye,  are  involuntary,  and  which  lead  us 

to  conclude  that  the  author  was  a  Jew.     This  is  inferred 
from  the  style  of  the  language.     The  Greek  is  well  known 
as  a  language  especially  rich  in  (i)  inflec- 
Shownbyhis    ^.-^j^g^  ^2)  in  synonyms  and  (3)  in  connect- 
ing and  relative  particles.     It  is,  therefore, 
especially  favorable  to  the  formation  of  sonorous  periods. 
The  Hebrew  is  the  reverse  of  this,  except  in  the  matter  of 
synonyms  of  words  other  than  conjunctions.     Any  scholar 
familiar  with  both  Greek  and   Hebrew   will  see  at  once  in 
the  fourth  gospel  the  manner  of  one  accustomed  to  think 
in  the  Hebrew  (or  Aramaic)  tongue.     The  rounded  Greek 
period  is  absent.     There    is  present  instead   the   Hebrew 
parallelism.     In  place  of  the  richness  of  diction,  which  a 
Greek  seeks   to   display   by   using    synonyms,   there  is  a 
repetition  of  the  same  word  in  succeeding  clauses.     And 
this  Hebrew   habit  of  thought  is  especially    seen  in  the 
paucity  of  the  conjunctions  used.     Unfortunately  this  fea- 
ture is  somewhat  obscured   in  our  English  translation,  in- 
asmuch as  the  same  word   is  rendered  differently.     Thus 

73 


74  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

the  same  word  is  translated  ^^and,"  *'but,"  ''then," 
** moreover,"  etc.  Now  where  a  native  Greek  would  have 
used  different  particles  to  indicate  the  relations  of  coor- 
dination and  opposition,  the  author  of  our  gospel  often 
makes  use  of  one  word  to  express  these  different  relations. 
Thus  (John  v.  43,  44)  :  "  I  am  come  in  my  Father's  name, 
a}id  [yet]  ye  receive  me  not :  .  .  .  .  How  can  ye  believe 
which  receive  glory  one  of  another,  and  [yet]  the  glory 
that  [cometh]  from  the  only  God  ye  seek  not."  Here 
although  the  relation  is  clearly  adversative,  the  author 
uses  the  coordinate  *'and,"  the  same  which  he  employs  in 
other  sentences  to  coordinate.  This  fact  receives  its  only 
adequate  explanation  when  we  remember  that  the  Hebrew 
word  means  both  ''but"  or  "and  yet,"  and  "and." 
Not  less  indicative  of  the  Jewish  mode  of  thought  is  the 
doubling  of  the  "amen  "  (twenty-five  times  in  the  gospel) 
at  the  beginning  of  declaration.  This  is  peculiar  to  the 
fourth  gospel  and  goes  back  to  the  Hebrew  principle  of 
doubling  a  word  to  produce  emphasis. 

On  these  stylistic  peculiarities  so  eminent  an  authority 
as  Bishop  Lightfoot  has  said  {^Expositor,  1890,  i,  17): 
"There  is  hardly  a  sentence  which  might  not  be  trans- 
lated, literally  into  Hebrew  or  Aramaic,  without  any  vio- 
lence to  the  language  or  the  sense." 

Corroborating   this   evidence   of  the 

And  Explanations      ,1        r  ^t.      1  •    .li_     •    i. 

style  of  the  language  is  the  interpreta- 
of  Names.  ^        r  •     1  •    •  i     1  1       •         1 

tion  of  individual  words  given  here  and 

there  in  the  gospel.  Such  words  as  Cephas,  Messias,  Gol- 
gotha, Thomas,  Rabboni,  Gabbatha,  are  explained,  their 
meaning  given.  Of  course  this  does  not  of  itself  imply  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  Aramaic,  but,  added  to  the  Jewish 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  75 

cast  of  thought  mentioned   above,  is  significant.     Espe- 
cially interesting  in  this  connection  are  the  words  "  Isca- 
riot"    and    -Simon    son    of    Joannes."     The   synoptic 
gospels  refer  the  name  "  Iscariot  "  to  Judas  alone,  but  the 
fourth  gospel  applies  it  not  only  to  Judas  but  to  his  father. 
This  shows  that  the  appellation  was  not  a  proper  name,  but 
belonged    to   the   place   of    origin    or   of  residence.     It 
means  -  the  man  of  Kerioth,"  and  so  could  be  applied  not 
only  to  Judas  but  to  his  father.     So,  too,  the  oldest  manu- 
scripts  give  us  not  "Simon  son  of  Jona  "  (with  the  syn- 
optics), but  "Simon  son  of  Joannes,"  Joannes  being  the 
equivalent   of  Johanan   or  John,  of  which  Jona  or  Jonas 
was  the  contract  form.     In  other  words,  the  fourth  gospel 
incidentally  explains,   makes  clear,   what  we  should  not 
have   understood,   or   might  have   misunderstood,   in  the 
synoptics,  that  the  name  of  Simon  Peter's  father  was  not 
Jonah  (signifying  "a  dove"),  but  John  (signifying  "the 

grace  of  God  ").  . 

An  equally  clear  token  of  Jewish  ori- 
The  Author  a  -     -^  f^^j^^j  j^  the  fact  that  the  author 

Palestinian  Jew.      ^^  ^^^  ^^^^^^  ^^^^^^  ^^^  ^^^y  tl,^  Qreek 

version  of  the  Old  Testament,  but  the  Hebrew  itself,  even 
reintroducing  difficulties  which  the   Septuagint  had  tried 
to  avoid.     This  enables  us  still  further  to 
He  uses  the  narrow  our  circle,  and   to   declare   that 

Hebrew  Bible.        ^^^    ^^^^^^^  ^^^^    ^^^^   ^^^^y    ^  j^,^^   ^,,^   a 

Palestinian  Jew.  Three  passages  particularly  have  been 
adduced:  St.  John  xix.  37  (Zech.  xii.  lo),  "They  shall 
look  on  him  whom  they  pierced"  (Greek:  "They  shall 
gaze  on  me  because  they  insulted");  St.  John  xii.  40 
(Isa.  vi.   10),    "Because  that   Esaias  said  again,  he  hath 


76  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

blinded  their  eyes,  and  hardened  their  heart '  *  (The  Sep- 
tuagint  has  the  sentence  in  a  passive  form) ;  and  St. 
John  xiii.  i8  (Ps.  xli.  9),  ''He  ...  .  hath  lifted  up  his 
heel  against  me  (Greek:  "He  ....  hath  multiplied 
tripping  with  the  heel  )".  In  the  first  of  these  cases  it  has 
been  shown  that  possibly  the  author  of  our  gospel  was 
dependent  on  a  translation  of  the  Hebrew  other  than  the 
Septuagint.  But  in  other  cases  the  Johannean  rendering 
stands  alone,  and  no  other  version  can  be  found  on  which 
it  could  depend.  We  are  therefore  driven  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  author  translated  directly  from  the  Hebrew. 
This  makes  our  gospel  impossible  of  Gentile  authorship. 
The  only  person  other  than  John  to  whom  it  was  attrib- 
uted in  early  times  was  Cerinthus,  a  proselyte,  an  Alexan- 
drian proselyte,  who  would  therefore  have  employed  the 
Septuagint  and  not  the  Hebrew. 

This  conclusion  is  necessitated  when  we 

Evidence  ^^^^  ^^^  ^^^  gospel  fullness  of  detail  (a)  con- 

cerning the  Messianic  hopes  of  the  Jews ; 
(<5)  concerning  the  mutual  relations  of  Jewish  sects,  and 
concerning  the  prejudices,  beliefs  and  customs  of  each ; 
and  (r)  concerning  the  contemporary  history  of  the  Jewish 
hierarchy  and  Herodian  sovereignty. 

We  have  already  had  occasion  to  note 
The  Messianic      .,     ,     t       •      -nr  r  ^^  ,    • 

J,  that   Justin  Martyr  follows  our  gospel  ni 

his  emphasis  on   the  Logos  as  incarnated. 

About   the   presentation   of  the   character   of  the    Logos 

is  hung  the  drapery  of  the  Messianic  person.     Throughout 

the  Logos  as  the  Messiah  is  the   topic  of  discourse  and 

narrative,   ruling  the  motive  and  furnishing   the    theme. 

The  agreement  of  the  character  of  Jesus  with  the  prophe- 


THE   JOHANTNKAN    PROBLEM. 


77 


cies  and  expectations  concerning  the  Coming  One  are 
constantly  in  the  foreground.  In  connection  with  the 
development  of  this  idea  our  author  presents  certain 
phases  which  show  that  he  was  intimately  acquainted  with 
the  expectations  of  the  Palestinians  concerning  the 
Anointed  One.  And  these  touches  are 
The  Giving  ^^^^^^^  incidental,  not  studied.  They  need 
of  Manna.  ^^^  acquaintance  with  Talmudic  exegesis  and 

rabbinic  gloss  to   make  them  intelligible.     For  instance, 
in  John  vi.  31  is  the  statement  put  to  Jesus  evidently  as  a 
test  of  his  Messianic  claims,  "  Our  fathers  did  eat  manna 
in  the  wilderness,"  and  we    note    that    Jesus    appears    to 
understand  the  statement  as  referring  to  himself  as  he  goes 
on  to  declare  that  he  is  the  "  bread  ....  which  cometh 
down  from  heaven."     Here  the  author  gives  us  a  ghmpse 
which  we  get  nowhere  else  in  the  New  Testament  of  the 
expectation  of  the  .rabbis,  a  tradition  current  among  the 
people    and    found    in    rabbinical    writings,    that    Messias 
would  perform  a  miracle  analogous  to  the  giving  of  the 
manna.     So  after    the    feeding  of  the  five    thousand    the 
people   say    (John    vi.    14):    ''This    is   of    a   truth    that 
prophet  that  should  come."     But  the  prophet,  as  we  shall 
see   was  to  be  like  Moses,  who  fed  the  Israelites  m    the 
wilderness  on  manna.     The  miracle  was  so  like  the  early 
miraculous  feeding  of  the  fugitives  from  Egypt  as  to  sug- 
gest the  possibility  that  the  worker  of  the  wonder  was  the 
''  prophet  "  foretold.    The  explanation  is  not  given  by  the 
author,  and  it  is  only  by  delving  among  the  rolls  of  rab- 
binical parchment  that  we  get  the  elucidation  which  opens 
up  so  clearly  the  reference  in  the  passage  to  the  expecta- 
tions concerning  the  prophet. 


78  THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

We  have  four  allusions  in  John  to 
"  The  Prophet."     ''the   prophet,"    going   back   on   Deut. 

xviii.  15,  and  if  we  compare  the  passages 
where  this  phrase  occurs  (John  i.  21-25,  ^'^^  ^4?  ^^^'  4°) 
we  shall  see  that  the  Jews  looked  on  "  the  prophet "  as  a 
different  person  from  ''the  Christ."  Christians  identified 
the  prophet  with  the  Christ,  so  that  the  idea  here  pre- 
sented is  a  contemporary  Jewish  idea,  not  a  later  Chris- 
tian conception. 

We  notice  next  the  minute  and  exact 

*^T,    c,    i.  understanding^  which  the  author  had  of  the 

of  the  Sects,         _  ^       ° 

interrelations  of  the  sects  of  the  Jews. 
The  synoptists  use  the  phrase,  "  The  Pharisees  and  Sad- 
ducees "  over  against  ''the  chief  priests  and  the 
Pharisees"  of  the  fourth  gospel.  One  not  intimately 
acquainted  with  the  situation  of  affairs  at  the  time  spoken 
of  would  not  know  that  at  that  period  the  chief  priests 
were  of  the  sect  of  the  Sadducees.  We  know  now  that  the 
latter  were  comparatively  few  in  number,  and  that,  though 
they  were  in  the  chief  places,  they  had  yet  to  cater  to  the 
desires  of  the  Pharisees.  The  consequence  is  that  in 
John,  with  but  one  exception,  the  Pharisees  lead  in  the 
persecution  of  Jesus,  the  chief  priests  simply  acting  as  their 
executive.     The  one  exception  is  notable.     It  is  when  the 

chief  priests,  without  taking  their  cue  from 
s  dd         s     ^^^^    Pharisees,    propose    to   put   Lazarus    to 

death.  On  this  Bishop  Lightfoot  (whom  we 
follow  here)  remarks  {Expositor,  1890,  i,  87):  "This 
(the  matter  of  Lazarus'  restoration  to  life)  was  essentially 
a  Sadducees'  question.  It  was  necessary  that  a  living  wit- 
ness to  the  great  truth  [the  resurrection  from  the  dead], 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  79 

which  tlie  high- priestly  party  denied,  should  be  got  rid 
of  at  all  hazards."  And  we  are  to  note  liow  such  action 
tallies  with  that  recorded  in  the  Acts  when  Paul  so  astutely 
arrays  the  Pharisees,  the  numerically  greater  party,  en  his 
side  by  introducing  the  question  of  the  resurrection.  And 
this  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  sects  is  made  more  evi- 
dent by  a  graphic  touch  which  becomes  striking  only  on 
comparison  with  a  passage  in  Josephus  (  Wars  of  the  Jews, 
ii,  viii,  14).  We  find  there  that  one  characteristic  of  this 
ruling  sect  was  their  brusque  rudeness.  Notice,  then,  in 
the  light  of  what  we  have  seen,  how  (John  xi.  49) 
Caiaphas,  the  high  priest,  coarsely  and  unceremoniously 
remarks  to  the  Pharisees,  ^'Ye  know  nothing  at  all." 
Evidently  only  one  who  was  thoroughly  conversant  with 
the  Sadducaic  manners  would  have  painted  in  this  emi- 
nently characteristic  remark.  Bishop  Lightfoot  remarks 
(^Expositor,  1890,  i,  87)  that  the  key  which  unlocks  the 
meaning  of  these  various  incidents  is  not  given  by  the 
author — to  him  they  were  so  familiar  that  it  does  not 
occur  but  that  others  will  understand  them — but  by  Jose- 
phus or  the  rabbis. 

Also  in  matters  other  than  those  relating 
and  of  to  sectarian  differences  the  author  is  thor- 

'^^^^^^^'^'f  oughly  informed.  He  knows  the  dishar- 
Life  mony    of    feeling    existing    between    the 

Jews  and  the  Samaritans.     He  lets  us  know 
that  under  the  Romans  the  Jews  had  not  the  power  of 

capital  punishment,  and    that    while  blasphemy 
^      under  the  Jewish  law  was  a  capital  offense  the 

Jews  were  powerless  to   inflict  the  penalty  and 
must  needs  trump  up  another  charge  to  secure  the  death 


8o  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

of  Jesus.  All  the  details  of  life  among  the  Jews  before  the 
fall  of  Jerusalem  are  matters  upon  which  he  is  thoroughly 
and  accurately  informed. 

While  the  evangelist  has  been  proved  exact 

IS  orica      .^^  ^j^^  statements  he  has  made  concerning  the 
Accuracy.  ,         . 

matters  summed  up  above,  his  historical  state- 
ments will  be    found   equally    trustworthy.     We    have  a 
point  of  time  given  in  the  second  chapter  (vss.  19,  20) 
which  shows  an  exact  knowledge  to  be  gained,  in  all  like- 
lihood, only  by  one  on  the  spot  at  the  time,  by 
one  who  knew   the  history  of  the  temple  then 
building.     ^^  Forty  and  six  years,''  say  the  Jews, 
"has  this  temple  been  building,   and  wilt  thou  raise  it 
again   in  three  days?"     It  is  discoverable  by  comparing 
several  passages  in  Josephus  that  Herod's  temple  was  com- 
menced about  B.C.  18.     Add  forty- six  years  to  this  date 
and  we  are  brought  down  to  A.D.  28,  29.     This  calcula- 
tion seems  an  easy  one,  but  Bishop  Lightfoot  calls  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  calculation  is  the  result  of  a  com- 
plicated exercise  of  historical  criticism.     Another  equally 
complicated  calculation  is  required  to  fix  the  dates  of  our 
Lord.     It  requires  a  comparison  of  dates   dependent    on 
both  Luke  and  John,  neither  alone  being  sufficient.     But 
these  two  independent  lines  of  research  bring  us  to  the 
same  date,  A.D.  28,  29.     The   bearing  of  this 

Lig-htfoot     Ytt  us  get  from  Bishop  Lightfoot' s  own  words 

on  the  .  _  .,  _         .  N        ,.  T 

TemiDle         {Expositor,  1890,  1,  91,  92)  :     ''Let  us  suppose 

the  gospel  to  have  been  written  in  the  middle 
of  the  second  century,  and  ask  ourselves  what  strong  im- 
probabilities the  hypothesis  involves.  The  writer  must 
have  first  made  himself  acquainted  with  a  number  of  facts 


THE  JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  8 I 

connected  with  the  temple  of  Herod.  He  must  not  only 
have  known  tliat  the  temple  was  commenced  in  a  particular 
year,  but  also  that  it  was  incomplete  at  the  time  of  our 
Lord's  ministry.  So  far  as  we  know  he  could  have  got 
these  facts  only  from  Josephus.  Even  Josephus  however 
does  not  state  the  actual  date  of  the  commencement  of  the 
temple.  It  requires  some  patient  research  to  arrive  at  this 
date  by  a  comparison  of  several  passages.  We  have  there- 
fore to  suppose,  first,  that  the  forger  of  the  fourth  gospel 
went  through  an  elaborate  critical  investigation  for  tlie 
sake  of  ascertaining  the  date.  But,  secondly,  he  must 
have  made  himself  acquainted  with  the  chronology  of  the 
gospel  history.  At  all  events,  he  must  have  ascertained 
the  date  of  the  commencement  of  our  Lord's  ministry. 
The  most  favorable  supposition  is,  that  he  had  before  him 
the  gospel  of  St.  Luke,  though  he  nowhere  else  betrays  the 
slightest  acquaintance  with  the  gospel.  Here  he  would  find 
the  date  he  wanted,  reckoned  by  the  years  of  the  Roman 
governors.  Thirdly,  after  arriving  at  these  two  results  by 
separate  processes,  he  must  combine  them ;  thus  con- 
necting the  chronology  of  the  Jewish  kings  with  the 
chronology  of  the  Roman  emperors,  the  chronology  of 
the  temple  erections  with  the  chronology  of  our  Lord's 
life. 

"  Wlien  he  has  taken  all  these  pains,  and  worked  up  the 
subject  so  elaborately,  he  drops  in  the  notice  which  has 
given  him  so  much  trouble  in  an  incidental  and  inobtrusive 
way.  It  has  no  bearing  on  his  history  ;  it  does  not  sub- 
serve the  purpose  of  his  theology.  It  leads  to  nothing, 
proves  nothing.  Certainly  the  art  of  concealing  art  was 
never  exercised   in  a  more  masterly  way  than  here.     And 


82  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

yet  this  was  an  age  which  perpetrated  the  most  crude  and 
bungling  forgeries,  and  is  denounced  by  modern  criticism 
for  its  utter  incapacity  of  criticism."  To  this  we  add, 
how  naturally  such  a  sentence  would  occur  to  a  Palestinian 
Jew  who  had  no  need  of  such  elaborate  calculations  and 
delicate  combinations  to  give  him  the  date — to  one  who 
knew  the  fact  by  residence  on  the  spot,  and  who  heard  the 
words  fall  from  the  lips  of  the  speakers  ! 

Yet  more  decisive  of  the  nativity  of 
The  Gospel's  ^|^g  author  of  the  gospel  are  the  topo- 
Topographical  ,  •     i    i       ■-,       r   ^  r  ^^    •    , 

Accuracv  graphical  details  of  the  scenes  oi  Christ  s 

ministry.  The  investigations  made  by 
Dr.  Robinson  and  others,  and  those  carried  on  under  the 
care  of  the  Palestine  Exploration  Fund,  have  furnished 
many  proofs  of  the  exactness  of  our  author's  knowledge  of 
the  geography  of  the  Holy  Land.  It  is  interesting  to 
note  what  a  change  has  come  over  the  spirit  of  criticism 

with  respect  to  the  fidelity  of  the  writer  of 
Crltkjs       ^       ^^^  fourth   gospel  to  truth   in    matters    of 

geography.  In  the  days  of  Baur,  topograph- 
ical inaccuracies  innumerable  were  pointed  out.  The  claim 
was  made  that  on  the  score  of  errors  in  the  names  and  lo- 
cation of  places  alone  it  was  impossible  that  the  author 
could  ever  have  visited  Palestine.  Such  a  claim  is  now 
given  up.  Dr.  Schlirer  says  on  this,  "  The  geographical 
errors  and  ignorance  of  things  Jewish  have  shrunk  to  a 
mere  minimum.     And  the  opposition  no  longer  lays  stress 

on  them."  The  opposition  long  dwelt 
Specifications.  ,  i      /-         ,         ,1  r     1 

on  the  fact  that  the  author  named  places 

not  elsewhere  named  in   Scripture.     But   places   bearing 

similar  names  are  now  found  in  the  localities  indicated  by 


THE  JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  83 

the  evangelist,  and  this  is  strong  confirmatory  evidence 
when  taken  in  connection  with  the  well-known  persistence 
of  local  names  in  the  Arabic  language.  The  names  which 
gave  so  much  trouble  to  the  critical  school  years  ago — 
such  names  as  Cana  of  Galilee^  Bethany  beyond  Jordan^ 
Ephraim  near  the  wilderness,  yEnon  7iear  to  Saiim,  Sychar 
— are  now  conceded  to  present  not  difficulties  but  evi- 
dences of  the  writer's  minute  knowledge  of  the  country. 
Besides  these  names,  showing  exact  acquaintance  with  the 
country  at  large,  the  description  of  places  in  and  about 
Jerusalem  is  no  less  suggestive.  Bethesda,  Siloam,  the 
brook  Kidron,  Golgotha  with  its  garden,  the  judgment 
seat  called  ''The  Pavement  "  or  **  Gabbatha,"  the  treas- 
ury, Solomon's  Porch,  and  other  places  are  well  known  to 
him.  So,  too,  there  are  verifications  of  his  otherwise  well- 
attested  knowledge  in  the  notes  we  find  as  to  distances — for 
instance,  Bethany  fifteen  furlongs  from  Jerusalem.  But 
we  are  not  even  yet  done  with  objections,  for  Mr.  Cross 
(^Westminster  Review,  August,  1890,  and  Critical  Review, 
February,  1891)  thinks  that  such  knowledge  as  the  author 
displays  might  have  been  gained  from  geographies  or  geo- 
graphical notices  extant  when  he  wrote.  Dr.  Sanday  has 
effectually  disposed  of  this  argument  in  the  Expositor  for 
March,  1892,  in  a  discussion  too  long  to  be  quoted  here. 
Suffice  it  to  say  tliat  he  there  concludes  that  the  author 
was  either  a  Palestinian  Jew  or  one  who  had  made  a  long 
sojourn  in  the  country.  Other  considerations  are  exam- 
ined which  show  the  former  of  these  conclusions  almost, 
if  not  quite,  binding. 

To  use  Dr.  Sanday's  words  {Expositor,  April,   1892): 
''  The  author  of  the  fourth  gospel  shows  his  Jewish  origin 


84  THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

not  only  by  his  knowledge  of  Palestinian  topography,  by 
the  cast  of  his  style,  by  his  interpretation 
Dr.  sanday's    ^^  Jewish  names,  ....  by  the  frequency 
Conclusion  ^  ,  .  .  .  ,      V^,  i   rr. 

of  his  quotations  from  the  Old   iestament, 

and  by  the  probability  that  in  some  of  them  he  has 
been  influenced  by  his  acquaintance  either  with  the  origi- 
nal text  or  with  the  current  Aramaic  paraphrases — but  that 
more  than  this,  his  mind  is  really  steeped  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament, and  that  his  leading  ideas  stand  as  much  in  direct- 
line  with  the  Old  Testament  as  those  of  St.  Paul  and  St. 
Peter."  And  Dr.  Sanday  quotes  from  a  careful  investi- 
gator, Thoma,  a  passage  which  concedes  all  that  has  been 
claimed  thus  far,  a  passage  which  we  can  do  no  better 

than  to  quote  as  Dr.  Sanday  has  given  it, 

and  Thoma's.  .  ,       i     •     t-.      t  i    .i      >-. 

expressing  so  clearly  in  English  the  Ger- 
man's conclusion  :  ''  This  friendliness  towards  the  Gentiles 
which  the  evangelist  shares  with  the  apostle  [of  the  Gen- 
tiles] serves  as  little  as  his  dislike  of  the  Jews  to  prove  his 
Gentile  origin.  On  the  contrary,  his  whole  culture,  the 
circle  of  ideas  in  which  he  is  at  home,  the  language  which 
is  familiar  to  him,  point  to  a  Jewish  or  Jewish-Christian 
origin.  True,  the  Samaritan  Justin  has  also  a  very  good 
knowledge  of  Scripture.  But  the  way  in  which  he  applies 
it  shows  that  this  knowledge  has  been  acquired  for  learned 
and  literary  use  in  polemics  and  apologetics ;  it  is  rather 
an  importation  from  without  of  foreign  material  which  he 
has  built  into  his  walls.  With  the  evangelist,  on  the  other 
hand,  one  sees  that  he  has  sucked  in  a  Jewish  way  of 
thinking  with  his  mother's  milk,  that  from  a  child  he  has 
been  fed  upon  the  living  bread  of  the  Word  of  God,  that 
from  his  youth  up  he  has  read  the  Holy  Scriptures  and 


THE  JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  85 

Steeped  himself  in  their  ideas,  figures  of  speech,  and 
words  of  expression,  so  that  the  reminiscences  of  them 
come  out  as  if  they  were  something  of  his  own,  rather  an 
unconscious  and  spontaneous  manner  of  thinking  and 
speaking  tlian  as  quotation  and  interpretation. 

"Along  with  this  he  is  acquainted  with  Jewish  customs 
and  usages,  and  that  such  as  are  not  to  be  got  from  the 
Old  Testament,  or  such  as  might  impress  themselves 
vividly  and  familiarly  upon  a  spectator  from  observing  the 
religious  ceremonies  of  an  alien  society.  He  alludes  im- 
partially and  with  no  great  effort  to  such  Jewish  traditions 
and  ideas  as  would  only  be  possible  to  one  who  had  him- 
self been  accustomed  to  move  amongst  Jews;  indeed 
this  perhaps  is  the  reason  which  makes  him  forget  here 
and  there  to  put  in  explanations  which,  to  a  non-Jewish 
reader,  would  be  quite  indispensable  to  make  him  under- 
stand what  was  said  (see  John  vii.  37f.,  2  2f.,  xviii.  32, 
xix.  31  ;  contrasted  with  xix.  41).  On  the  other  hand,  his 
explanatory  notes  on  the  manners  and  customs  of  the  Jews 
may  be  accounted  for  by  reference  to  Gentile  readers  on 
whom  the  author  had  to  reckon,  and  probably  did  imme- 
diately reckon. 

"  But  what  tells  more  especially  for  Jewish  origin  is  the 
knowledge  of  Hebrew  which  the  author  displays.  This 
knowledge  is  considerably  greater  than  Justin's,  who 
undertakes  to  give  the  meaning  of  a  name  here  and  there, 
badly  enough  ;  it  is  better  than  Philo's,  who  may  perhaps 
have  taken  his  interpretations  from  an  Ononasticon.  Be- 
cause from  the  current  version,  to  whic:h  both  the  Jewish 
and  the  Christian  philosopher  keep  as  a  rule,  there  are 
found  in  the  gospel  considerable  divergences  which  appear 


86  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

to  rest  not  upon  a  special  improved  translation  of  the  Old 
Testament  Scriptures,  but  upon  a  knowledge  of  the  He- 
brew text.  What  most  directly  points  to  a  knowledge  of 
Hebrew  is  the  fact  that  the  author  not  only  is  able  to  give 
a  meaning  and  interpretation  to  names  which  he  finds  to 
his  hand,  or  else  (as  in  the  case  of  Nathaniel)  to  express 
themselves  by  synonyms,  but  he  even  forms  Aramaic 
words  of  his  own,  like  Bethesda." 

If  all  the  indications  mentioned  point  to  the  Jewish  ori- 
gin of  the  writer  of  our  gospel,  they  also,  with  other  indices, 
suggest    that    he   was    also    an    eyewitness. 

The  Author       These  indices  are  found  in  graphic  and  mi- 
Proved  an  ,       .,        ,     .  ,  .         , 
Evewitness       ^^^^  details  relating  to  character,  and  to  the 

times  and  theatres  of  events,  and  in  details 
of  number.  Of  course  we  cannot  lay  weight  here  on  the 
claim  of  the  writer  to  be  an  eyewitness — any  forger  might 
have  asserted  such  a  claim.  But  we  are  concerned  with 
the  casual  pointers,  the  unmistakably  undesigned  and  natur- 
ally inserted  evidence  that  the  writer  had  before  him  as  he 
wrote  a  mental  picture  based  not  on  the  imagination  but 
on  experience.  We  find,  for  instance,  that  the  pei'sonce- 
dramatis  are  vividly  before  him.  Thus  there  occurs  sen- 
tence upon  sentence  opening  with, 
oj  /^v.  ^^^^  ®^  ''The  Scribes  and  Pharisees  say  unto 
him,"  ''Jesus  answered  and  said," 
"The  Jews  say  unto  him,"  "The  officers  answered" — 
clearly  the  actors  in  the  scene  were  in  a  lively  sense  in  the 
writer's  mind's  eye.  Not  less  drawn  from  the  life  are  the 
characters  presented.  Pilate,  indifferent  to  truth  as  an 
abstraction  and  cynically  scornful ;  Nathaniel,  the  true 
Israelite,  in  whom  there  was  no  guile ;  Peter,   impulsive, 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM,  87 

zealous,  eager,  yet  falling  short  of  his  professions ; 
Thomas,  who  is  no  more  than  mentioned  in  the  synoptics, 
but  whose  character  is  sketched  in  bold  outline  in  the 
fourth  gospel — Thomas,  who  was  called  Didymus,  the 
twin,  whose  presence  and  absence  with  the  other  disciples 
with  the  consequences  thereof  to  himself  are  so  clearly 
noted ;  Nicodemus,  known  as  a  Pharisee,  one  of  the 
rulers  of  the  Jews,  yet  timid  and  irresolute ;  all  these 
are  portraits  which  by  their  circumstantiality  and  their 
directness  manifest  the  closest  familiarity  with  the  charac- 
ter traits  of  their  originals. 

Especially  interesting  in  this  connection  is  the  develop- 
ment of  the  difference  in  character  of  Martha  and  Mary. 
Bishop  Lightfoot  remarks  that  Luke  draws  the  picture  of 
these  two  women  in  a  definite  incident  and  in  bold  con- 
trast. Though  in  John  the  same  difference  in  disposition 
appears,  it  is  rather  by  the  patient  sketching  of  minute  de- 
tails in  the  course  of  a  continuous  narrative  that  we  are  led 
to  apprehend  the  contrast  in  the  natures  of  the  two  sisters. 
If  acquaintance  with  the  persons  pre- 
of  Time  °  ^^  sented  is  manifested  by  the  liveliness  of 
the  portrayal,  not  less  does  the  minuteness 
with  which  points  of  time  are  noted  indicate  the  personal 
presence  of  the  author.  These  relate  (i)  to  the  hour  of 
the  day  :  the  tenth  hour  (i.  40),  the  sixth  hour  (iv.  6),  the 
seventh  hour  (iv.  52),  the  sixth  hour  (xix.  14) ;  (2)  to  the 
period  of  the  day:  it  was  night  (xiii.  30),  in  the  morning 
while  it  was  yet  dark  (xx.  i),  the  evening  (vi.  16,  xx.  19); 
(3)  to  periods  of  time :  eight  days  (xx.  11),  the  morrow 
(i.  29,  43),  again  on  the  morrow  (i.  35),  the  third  day 
(ii.  i),  six  days  before  the  passover  (xii.  1). 


88  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

Further  corroboration  is  found  in  the  notes 
of  Place,  of  the  place  of  events:  Thus  John  baptized 
at  Bethany  and  ^Enon  (the  synoptics  tell 
us  only  that  John  baptized  "about  Jordan,"  "  in  Jordan," 
etc.);  the  nobleman's  son  was  sick  at  Capernaum 
while  Jesus  was  at  Cana  (iv.  46} ;  he  spent  a  portion  of 
'tlixxC  in  a  city  called  Ephraim  (xi.  54);  Christ  preached 
or  spoke  in  Solomon's  Porch  (x.  23);  in  a  gathering  at 
Capernaum  (vi.  59)  ;  in  the  treasury  (vii.  20) ;  the  mar- 
riage was  in  Cana  of  Galilee  (ii.  i). 

Just  as  significant  are  the  memoranda  of 
of  Number,  numbers  in  the  gospel :  There  were  two  dis- 
ciples of  John  (i.  35),  six  waterpots  (ii.  6), 
five  loaves  and  two  fishes  (vi.  9),  twenty-five  furlongs 
(vi.  19),  four  soldiers  (xix.  23),  two  hundred  cubits 
(xxi.   8),  one  hundred  and  fifty-three  fishes  (xxi.  11). 

We    may    not    pass    over   what    is 
and  by  Picturesque      especially  difficult  to  summarize,  that 

^        -I,-       -n,       4.        is  the  recollection  and   setting  forth 
Describing-  Events.  ° 

of  the  details  which  have  no  bearing 
on  the  purpose  of  the  book,  but  which  have  the  appearance 
of  flowing  spontaneously  from  the  memory  of  the  narrator. 
Let  us  take  (as  an  example  of  this  only,  for  the  gospel  is  so 
replete  with  this  kind  of  detail  that  we  may  not  take  space 
to  exhaust  it),  the  visit  of  the  two  disciples  to  the  tomb. 
We  notice  that  Mary  Magdalene  came  runfting  with  the 
news  to  Peter  and  the  anonymous  disciple  whom  Jesus 
loved.  These  two  go  toward  the  tomb,  but  their  pace  is 
a  run,  and  (at  first,  apparently)  they  keep  on  equal  terms, 
though  at  the  end  "the  other  disciple"  outruns  Peter  and 
comes  first  to  the  tomb,  and  stoops  and  looks  in,  but  does 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  89 

not  enter.  Then  Peter  arrives  and  enters  the  tomb,  and 
we  have  immediately  a  description  of  the  contents  and 
their  position.  Peter  is  followed  by  the  other  disciple, 
who  comes,  sees  and  believes,  after  which  each  goes  to  his 
oiun  home.  There  are  countless  other  details  of  this  char- 
acter which  reveal  the  eyewitness,  e.g.,  the  loaves  which 
a  boy  had  were  barley  loaves  (vi.  9)  ;  when  Jesus  was 
entertained  at  Bethany,  Martha  served,  Lazarus  sat  at 
meat,  Mary  anointed  his  feet,  and  ''  the  house  was  filled 
witJi  the  odour  of  ointment'^  (xii.  2,  3);  the  remarks 
which  the  bystanders  make  with  reference  to  the  cured 
blind  man  are  noted  (ix.  9). 

Long  as  we  have  dwelt  on  this  phase  of 
^  the   narrative  of   the  last  gospel,   we  have 

only  hinted  at  the  many  circumstances 
whicli  point  to  an  eyewitness  as  its  author.  And  the 
force  of  the  argument  lies  not  merely  nor  chiefly  in  the 
details  themselves  nor  in  tlieir  number,  but  in  the  fact 
that  they  have  all  the  appearance  of  being  spontaneous. 
They  are  not  lugged  in  to  give  verisimilitude  to  the  story, 
they  are  a  part  of  the  story,  take  their  places  so  naturally 
as  to  preclude  a  conscious  effort  to  recall  them,  a  striving 
to  make  a  complete  narrative.  Many  things  which  would 
be  much  clearer,  if  explained,  receive  no  explication, 
simply  because  the  writer  did  not  perceive,  so  intimate 
was  he  with  them,  that  they  needed  explanation.  And 
yet  he  does  not  hesitate  to  elucidate  wheti  it  oceurs  to  him 
that  elucidation  is  necessary.  Instances  of  this  are  seen 
in  the  interpretation  of  Hebrew  names,  in  the  reason  for 
the  setting  of  the  waterpots  at  the  marriage,  etc.,  etc. 
An  extension  of  the  same  line  of  reasoning  as  that  in 


90  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

which  we  have  just  indulged  may  be  used  to  narrow  still 

further  the  circle  of  possible  authorship. 
The  Author       rj.,  -^  -n  i     .• 

an  Apostle  writer  was  not  only  a  ]qw,  sl  Palestine 

Jew,  an  eyewitness ;  he  must  have  been 
an  apostle.  The  character  of  many  of  the  scenes  de- 
scribed, and  so  described  as  to  warrant  the  assumption 
that  the  writer  was  present,  could  have  been  known  only 
to  an  apostle.  To  this  the  objection  is  made  that  such 
information  as  the  author  gives  might  conceivably  be  at 
second  hand.  There  is  the  possibility  of  this,  but  the 
tests  we  have  applied  above,  when  employed  here,  pre- 
clude such  an  explanation.  The  scale  is  so  large  and  the 
minutiae  so  clearly  given  as  to  necessitate  the  conclusion 
that  the  sum  of  knowledge  was  gained  by  experience  and 
observation,    not  by   hearsay.     Of    course,   the  claim  we 

make,  rests  upon  no  one  event  or  set  of 
Proved  by  His  t    •       i  n    i  ,      i 

Knowledge  of        events.     It  is  that  all  through  the  gospel 

the  Disciples'  the  events  in  which  the  disciples  were 
Acts,  Thoughts  particularly  concerned,  the  discourses 
and  Feelings,  directed  to  them,  the  hopes  and  aspira- 
tions and  fears  which  arose  in  their  breasts,  are  known  to 
him.  He  is  acquainted  with  their  opinions  at  crises  in 
the  life  of  Christ ;  he  remembers  that  they  murmured  at 
the  Saviour's  hard  sayings  (vi.  60,  61),  that  they  were  sur- 
prised that  he  should  talk  with  a  woman  (iv.  27),  that  they 
feared  at  the  sight  of  Jesus  walking  on  the  sea  (vi.  19), 
that  at  later  times  they  recalled  prophecies  concerning 
him  which  had  been  fulfilled  (ii.  17,  xii.  16),  and  that  they 
were  mystified  by  the  Master's  sayings  (vi.  60,  xiii.  22, 
28).  He  rehearses  their  discussions  and  recounts  their 
sayings ',  he  knows  their  places  of  resort  and  tells  us  of 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  9^ 

mistaken  notions  entertained  by  them  and  afterward  set 
right.  In  short,  he  appears  to  have  lived  among  them  an 
intimate  and  an  associate,  a  sharer  in  their  joys,  a  par- 
ticipant in  their  sorrows,  partaking  of  their  hopes,  receiv- 
ing instruction  with  them,  reverencing  their  Master  and 
remaining  with  him  in  trial  and  in  death,  and  meetmg 
him  after  his  resurrection. 

Contributing  fully  as  much  as  the  precedmg  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  author  was  an  apostle  is 
and  of  the  ^^j^  insight  into  the  workings  of  our  Lord's 

Mind  of  Jesus.      ^^.^^^^^      ^^  ^^^^^^   ^^^^   troubled  spirit    of 

the  Master  (xi.  33,  xiii.  21),  the  reasons  for  his  actions 
(ii.  24,  V.  6,  vi.  15,  vii.  I),  the  sources  of  his  ques- 
tioning and  discourses  (vi.  6,  61,  64,  xiu.  i,  3,  ^O- 
As  Bishop  Westcott  has  said  {Commentary,  p.  xxi) : 
-  He  speaks  as  one  to  whom  the  mind  of  the  Lord  was 
laid  open  "  Surely  to  no  one  outside  the  little  band  of 
intimates  was  possible  so  confidential  association  with  the 
Master  as  the  foregoing  implies. 

But  if  what  precedes  implies  an  apostle  as  the  author, 
we  are  shut  up  to  the  apostle  John  as  the  only  apostle  to 
whom  the  authorship  of  the  fourth  gospel 
That  Apostle  ^^^^^  possible.  Now  we  find  in  the  epilogue 
was  John,  ^^  ^^^^  ^^^p^^  ^^^  declaration  that  the  disci- 
ple who  -bore  witness"  of  the  things  told  in  that  gos- 
pel or,  in  other  words,  who  wrote  it,  was  the  disciple  of 
whom  Jesus  said:  '' If  I  will  that  he  tarry 
the  Disciple  till  I  come,  what  is  that  to  thee?"  and 

"Whom  Jesus      ^^^^^   ^^^    ^^,^^  ^1^^  disciple  *'whom   Jesus 
^°''^'^'"  loved."       (An    incidental  confirmation 

of  this   is    found  in  the  scene  at   the   institution    of  the 


92  THE   JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

Lord's  Supper.  After  the  Saviour  had  declared  that  one 
of  the  disciples  was  to  betray  him,  Peter  signaled  the  dis- 
ciple '*whom  Jesus  loved"   to  ask  who  the  traitor  was. 

This   he  did,   and  Christ   evidently  an- 

Confirmation.  ...  .  _        .        t     •   ,         ..  , 

swered  him  alone,  for  the  disciples   did 

not  understand  what  the  Lord  meant  when  he  said  to 
Judas:  *' That  thou  doest,  do  quickly."  But  evidently 
that  disciple  understood,  as  we  learn  from  the  fact  that  his 
is  the  only  narrative  of  the  incident,  the  synoptists  know- 
ing nothing  of  the  application  of  Jesus'  remark  to  Judas. 
And  one  thing  more  adds  probability  to  this  identifica- 
tion. Our  Saviour  on  the  cross  committed  his  mother  to 
the  care  of  this  same  disciple.  This  does  not  appear  in 
the  record  of  the  other  evangelists.  It  would  be  strange 
if  such  a  story  was  invented  in  the  second  century,  or,  sup- 
posing it  to  be  true,  were  rediscovered.  But  how  natural 
that  the  disciple  himself  should  remember  it,  or  rather, 
how  unlikely  that  he  should  not !)  From  the  synoptics 
we  learn  that  the  inner  circle  of  disciples,  those  who  were 
in  a  special  sense  near  to  Jesus,  consisted  of  Peter,  James 
and  John.  Of  these  we  know  that  James  suffered  martyr- 
dom in  the  early  days  of  the  church,  that  Peter  also 
suffered  death  probably  in  A.D.  dd  or  67,  and  all  indica- 
tions point  to  a  somewhat  later  date  for  our  gospel.  So 
that  by  a  process  of  elimination,  only  John  is  left  as  the 
possible  author  of  the  book  which  goes  by  his  name. 

Are  there  any  indications  in  the  gospel  it- 
The  Baptist's    g^j^  ^j^^^  ^^j.  supposition  is  true  ?    Undoubt- 

Omitted  ^^^^  there  are.     In  the  first  place  the  evan- 

gelist   John    is  never   named  in  the  fourth 
gospel.     Once,  indeed,  we  have  mention  of  the  ''sons  of 


THE    JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  93 

Zebedee,"  but  the  only  other  references  to  John,  if  the  gos- 
pel contains  any,  can  be  found  only  in  the  phrase,  "the 
disciple  wliom  Jesus  loved."  An  examination  of  the  syn- 
optics will  show  that  the  sons  of  Zebedee  are  always 
named  in  the  front  rank  of  the  apostles,  they  occupy  a 
prominent  position  among  the  apostles.  Unless  we  iden- 
tify this  especially  favored  disciple  of  our  gospel  with 
John,  we  have  the  anomaly,  most  difficult  of  explanation, 
that  so  central  a  figure  as  one  of  the  favored  three  does 
not  figure  at  all  in  the  last  of  the  gospels.  Secondly,  we 
notice  that  the  evangelist  is  very  exact  in  defining  names 
in  his  gospel.  Simon  Peter  has  either  his  full  name  or 
the  new  name  Peter.  Thomas  is  nearly  always  called 
Didymus,  contrary  to  the  custom  of  the  synoptists.  Tlie 
two  Judases  are  carefully  distinguished.  Caiaphas  is 
named  as  the  high  priest.  But  when  we  come  to  John 
the  Baptist,  whom  the  synoptists  always  distinguished 
carefully  from  John,  the  Lord's  disciple,  we  find  him 
spoken  of  simply  as  John.  On  this.  Bishop  Westcott  re- 
marks (^Co?nmeniar}\  p.  xxii):  "If  the  writer  of  the  gos- 
pel were  himself  the  other  John  of  the  gospel  history,  it  is 
perfectly  natural  that  he  should  think  of  the  Baptist,  apart 
from  himself,  as  John  only."  Godet  offers  another  expla- 
nation (not  so  good,  we  think)  of  this  omission  to  desig- 
nate the  forerunner  as  "the  Baptist,"  viz.,  that  it  is  the 
omission  of  one  who  knew  the  son  of  Zacharias  ^^  before 
history  attached  that  epithet  to  his  name,  which,  becom- 
ing technical,  became  at  a  later  period  inseparable 
from  it." 

Bearing  in  mind  the  process  of  elimination  in  the  pre- 
ceding lines,   we   may  find    further  corroboration    of  the 


94  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

conclusion  we  have  reached  in  the  fact  that  after  the  res- 
urrection the  unnamed  disciple  is  closely  associated  with 
Peter  in  just  the  manner  that  John  is  represented  to  have 
been  in  the  other  gospels. 

When  we  accept  John  as  the  author,  to  which  conclu- 
sion all  considerations  conduct  us ;  when  we  see  how  all 

events  square  themselves  with  the  rec- 
The  Conclusion  ^^^  j^^^^  difficulties  vanish  (barring 
Fits  the  Case.  '  ,    i,     j     ,        •  i       •  ^ 

those    we    shall    deal    with    in    another 

chapter),    and    how    easy    becomes    the    explanation    of 

things  otherwise  inexplicable,  the  extreme  probability  of 

that  conclusion  becomes  so  apparent  that  we  cannot  but 

rest  assured  that  the  tradition  which  has 

Negative  Criti-     obtained,  through  nineteen  centuries,  is 

cism  Destruc-        , ,  ,  ,     .  r     .^         t   i 

..  the     only    solution    of    the    Johannean 

problem.       On     the     other     hand,    one 

fatal    result   of    all    negative    criticism,    concerning    the 

fourth  gospel,  is  that   no  author  can  be  found  who  will 

fit  the  needs  of  the  case.     The    marvelous  coherence  of 

the  book,  its  perfect  self-consistency,  the 

No  Author  but  ^  ,  ^  ^.  r  i  r   ^i. 

-  ,  ., ,  powerful  presentation  of  a  phase  of  the 

John  possible.       ^  ^  ^ 

Saviour's  life — be  that  phase  real  or  im- 
aginary, the  character  of  the  miracles,  the  unexampled 
loftiness  of  the  discourses,  the  submergence  of  the  author 
in  a  subtle  and  unobtrusive  indication  of  personality — all 
this  would  require  a  mind  of  the  finest  grain,  a  mentality 
of  such  commanding  force,  that  we  cannot  conceive  of  the 
possibility  of  its  being  hidden  even  during  the  first  half 
of  the  second  century.  Assume,  however,  that  John  wrote 
the  book,  that  he  was  therefore  reporting  the  utterances 
and  doings  of  a  mind  vastly  more  subtle  and  comprehen- 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  95 

sive  than  his  own,  difficulties  vanish,  mysteries  are  cleared 
up,  the  riddle  finds  its  solution. 

But  there  are  one  or  two  things  more  ivithin  the  gospel 
which  agree  with  external  testimony.     There  are  certain 
indications  that    it    was    written  toward 
Who  Wrote  in       ^^^^  ^^^^^   ^f  j^i^j^'g  life.     Dr.    Peabody 
His  Old  Age.  ^^^^  referred  to  what  he  calls  ''  the  marks 

of  senility,"   "  the  backsetting  of  an  old  man's  memory," 
in  the  details  which  come  out  in  the  narrative  portion  of 
the  gospel.     Such  is,  for  example,  the  note  concerning  the 
supper  when  John  (we  assume  that  his  authorship  is  made 
probable)  was  about  to  ask  Jesus  the  name  of  the  traitor, 
he  remembered  (as  though  he  had  often  dwelt  on  the  rec- 
ollection) the  ''  leaning  back,  as  he  was,  on  Jesus'  breast." 
Dr.  Peabody  has  instanced  the  episode  of  the  blind  beg- 
gar.    The  picture  is  clearly  drawn  as  though  now  recol- 
lected as  it  is  told  for  the  first  time.     There  is  the  caution 
of  the  parents,  the  reference  to  the  ability  of  the  son  to 
speak  for   himself;  that   confidence   proved   not  to   have 
been  misplaced,  as  the  one-time  blind  man,  who,  like  a 
gamin,  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  at  first  answers  the  ques- 
tion soberly;  then,  as  the  repeated  questioning  takes  on 
the  form  of  a  cross-examination,  grows  saucy,  and  at  last 
lets  his  keen  wit  flash  out  to  the  discomfiture  of  his  exami- 
ners, who  take  revenge  for  their  defeat  by  excommunica- 
ting their  conqueror.     Details,  which  at  the  time  of  the 
action   do   not    force    themselves  sensibly  upon  the  con- 
sciousness, come  out  one  by  one  under  reflection,  like  the 
features  of  a  landscape  on  the  film  under  the  developer. 
So  the  gospel  teems  with  just  the  sort  of  minutiae  which, 
while  unessential  to  the  treatment  of  the  theme,  yet  prove 


9^  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

that  the  theme  itself  has  been  so  long  dwelt  on,  that  even 
the  minor  accessory  and  attendant  circumstances  have 
become  familiar  and  endeared  features  of  the  subject. 

We  have  seen  that  the   external  testimony  pointed  to 
Ephesus  as  the  place  of  composition.     We  cannot  defin- 
itely locate  the  author  from  internal  tes- 
The  Gospel  not      timonv.     But  the  gospel  does  show  that 
W^ritten  m  •      i-v  i       • 

Palestine  nor  "^  '*^^^  ^°^  ^^^   Palestine,  and  that  he  was 

to  Jews.  speaking   to   other  than  Jews.     For  in- 

stance, if  he  had  been  writing  to  the 
Jews  he  would  not  have  explained  the  use  which  the  six 
waterpots  usually  served,  nor  would  he  have  used  the 
phrase,  ''after  the  Jew' s  manner  of  purifying."  Indeed 
we  find  indications  of  the  Gentile  character  of  the  audi- 
ence in  the  constant  reiteration  of  the  words,  ''the  Jews." 
So,  too,  a  Jew  would  hardly  have  needed  to  be  told  that 
John  baptized  in  ^non,  "  because  there  was  much  water 
there."  Had  he  been  writing  to  Jews  we  could  not  have 
imagined  him  writing,  "Now  there  is  in  Jerusalem  by  the 
sheep  gate  a  pool,"  nor  would  he  have  said,  "  After  these 
things  there  was  a  feast  of  the  /ews.''  Still  less  would 
it  have  been  necessary  to  insert  translations  of  Hebrew  or 
Aramaic  words,  such  as  we  have  had  occasion  to  mention 
in  another  connection.  A  hint  that  the  apostle  was 
removed  from  Palestine  may  possibly  be  seen  in  the 
almost  uniform  past  tense  in  which  locations  are  named, 
such  as  (xviii.  i,  xix.  41)  "  there  was  a  garden." 

If  our  reading  of  the  testimony  is  correct, 

therefore,   we  find  a  singular  correspondence 

between  testimony  from  without  and  testimony 

from  within  the  gospel  as  to  the  time  and  place  of  its 


THE  JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  97 

origin,  and  its  author.  In  tlie  case  of  the  external  testi- 
mony, there  is  a  marked  unanimity,  an  agreement  which 
cannot  be  accounted  for  on  grounds  other  than  its  truth. 
While  none  the  less  does  the  testimony 
Convergence  ^^.^^^^  within  give  the  impression  of  being 
es  imony.  •j^^j^-j^.j^j-^j^  undesigned,  the  natural  deposit 
of  a  mind  surcharged  with  verity.  Both  lines  of  witness 
converge  toward  the  same  point  of  time  and  place,  and 
point  to  one  individual.  The  tradition  is  uniform  with 
but  a  single  break,  which,  nevertheless,  can  be  accounted 
for.  And  in  view  of  the  fact  mentioned  above  that  adverse 
criticism  substitutes  no  name  in  the  place  of  John,  nay, 
even  is  not  agreed  as  to  the  nationality  of  the  author,  and, 
further,  while  calling  it  a  '' Tendency- writing,"  is  not 
altogether  a  unit  in  defining  that  *'  tendency,"  we  submit 
that  the  explanation  which  explains,  the  hypothesis  (if  it 
can  be  called  such)  which  accounts  for  the  phenomena,  is 
the  only  one  which  on  grounds  purely  scientific,  apart  from 
sentiment,  should  obtain. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

Objections  Answered 

Even  though  we  have  established  what  we 
Objections.  ,  ,    i  ,     ^        i .  i 

set  out  to  make  probable  (we  did  not  propose 

to  demonstrate  the  authorship  of  John),  there   are  certain 
objections  which  will  rise  again  and  again  and   produce 
more  or  less  disquiet.      It  may  be  well  to  con- 
Johannean     gider   these   very  briefly.     One  of  the   most 
D"ff    f  om     weighty  of  them  is  that  the  character  of  the 
Synoptics',     discourses  in  the  fourth  gospel  differs  so  radi- 
cally in  substance  and  in  style  from  that  of  the 
discourses  in  the  synoptics  that  they  could  not  have  been 
spoken  by  the  same  person.     The  statement  some  objectors 
make  is  that  if  the  Johannean  discourses  were 
nswers .     ^^^^  there  would  be  found  stronger  traces  in 
the   synoptic    gospels.     That  a  difference  exists  between 
the  two  sets  of  discourses  is  admitted  on  all 

Di  erences  gi^es,  but  the  defenders  of  the  arenuineness 
Exag-g-erated.  .  .         ° 

of  our  gospel  claim  that  this  difference  has 

been  exaggerated.  That  there  are  strong  points  of  con- 
nection pointing  from  Johannean  to  synoptic,  and  from 
synoptic  to  Johannean  accounts,  has  come  to  be  recog- 
nized. But  all  this  being  granted,  a  difference,  and  a  great 
difference,  still  remains.     How  account  for  it  ? 

A  partial  answer  (though  not  entirely   satisfactory)   is 

98 


THE   JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM.  99 

that   the  audience  differed.     The  synoptic  discourses  were 
dehvered    mainly  before  Galilean   and  there- 
„  fore    theologically  untrained    audiences,   and 

were  on  that  account  less  mystic,  more  imme- 
diately practical,  than  the  Johannean  discourses  delivered 
to  principally  Judcan  assemblages.  The  frequent  inter- 
polation in  the  Johannean  discourses  of  objection  and 
answer  shows  a  substantial  accuracy  in  the  reports  of  the 
conversations,  or  else,  a  sense  of  dramatic  vividness  truly 
wonderful.  We  have  also  to  note  that  when  the  geo- 
graphical and  historical  accuracy  has  been  proved,  there  is 
created  a  very  strong  presumption  that  the  addresses  are 
substantially  historical.     Then,  too,  in  the 

..  .^    „      ^         Galilean  discourses   much   that    the  other 
tivity  Greater. 

writers  would  pass  over  might  catch  John's 
ear  because  of  his  livelier  spiritual  receptivity.  If  our 
identification  of  him  with  the  beloved  disciple  is  correct, 
and  remembering  that  he  was  probably  a  cousin  of  the 
Lord,  a  plausible  supposition  is  that  he  talked  over  many 
things  in  private  with  the  Master,  and  so  gained  a  deeper 
insight  into  his  mind.     Doubtless,  too,  John 

He  was  an      exercised  the  function  of  an  editor  as  well  as 
Editor  ,         .   ,  rr^,      ,  r    1      1       1    • 

as  well  ^  chronicler.      The  last  verse  of  the  book  im- 

plies that  the  contents  of  the  gospel  were  only 
a  selection.  Doubtless  John  was  in  a  position  of  compara- 
tive affluence.  It  is  not  unreasonable  to  conjecture  that  his 
education  was  superior  to  that  of  the  majority  of  the  dis- 
ciples, and  that  therefore  sayings  of  deeper  import  clung  to 
his  mind  and  are  reproduced  in  his  gospel. 

Another  suggestion  which  is  entitled  to  respectful  con- 
sideration is  that  the  synoptists  seem  to  have  been  bound 


lOO  THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

by  an  oral  tradition  which  circumscribed 
Oral  Tradition   i\iq[y   record.     John   was  further  removed 

from  this  tradition  both  in  time  and  place, 
Synoptics.  ^        ' 

he  therefore  saw  more  and  more  clearly  that 
the  *Metter  killeth  but  the  spirit  giveth  life,"  and  so  his 
statement  is  a  freer  transcript  than  theirs.  No  less  important 
for  our  purpose  is  it  to  recall  that  John  was  clearly  supple- 
menting the  other  gospels.  For  this  we  have  the  testimony 
of  Clement  of  Alexandria,  of  Eusebius, 

our        ospe         ^^^  ^^  Jerome.     And  even  if  no  such 
Supplementary.  -^ 

tradition  were   extant,   we  should    not, 

a  prioj'i,  expect  him  to  write  a  narrative  on  the  same  lines 
as  those  of  three  already  existing  gospels.  If  there  were 
material  existing  outside  of  the  synoptic  tradition,  we 
should  look  for  him  to  use  it.  Bearing  this  in  mind,  per- 
haps the  most  complete  answer  is  that  John  was  answering 
an  incipient  gnosticism,  which  made  the  Logos  an  inferior 

being.     He  aimed    to  refute   this  form    of 
Polemic  Aim  ,,  .      .,       . .  .         .       , 

_^        .  error,  and  hence,  m  identifymg  the  Logos 

with  God,  made  his  whole  argument  tend  in 
that  direction,  choosing  narrative  and  discourse  with  that 
end  in  view.  With  this  object  it  was  only  natural  that 
discourses  of  the  Saviour  which  bore  on  this  subject,  and 
which,  apart  from  this  special  bearing,  had  not  been  re- 
membered, that  isolated  remarks  which  had  for  the  time 
being  sunk  out  of  sight,  should  rise  to  the  surface  when  the 
occasion  recalled  and  the  subject  sug- 
gested them.  And  this  suggestion  finds 
Bent  of  John's       ^      ^  .        .       ,      .     ,.       .^^   ,        -r   n     , 

j^jj^^j  connrmation  m  the  indication  that  John  s 

mind  was  naturally  of  the  bent  to  notice 
sayings,  to  store  away  discourses,  of  a  philosophic  character. 


Natural 


THE  JOHANNEAN  PROBLEM.  loi 

The  use  of  ''Logos"  in  the  Revelation  prefigures  its  de- 
velopment later  in  life  (assuming,  of  course,  an  early  date 
and  identity  of  authorship  for  the  Apocalypse).  It  would 
naturally  happen,  then,  that  addresses  and  speeches  and 
chance  remarks  which  would  have  no  lodgment  in  minds 
not  metaphysically  inclined  would  find  a  home  and  an 
abiding  place  in  John's  heart,  thence  to  be  recalled  when 
time  and  occasion  served. 

Just  one  thing  more  seems  necessary  here,  and  that 
is  to  suggest  that  in  the  process  of  editing  undoubtedly 
John  exercised  his  prerogative  of  choosing  the  discourses 
or  sayings,  of  giving  prominence  to  the  teachings  of 
Christ,  which  bore  most  directly  on  the  polemic  pur- 
pose which  he  had  in  view.  From  this  there  may  ap- 
pear throughout  the  Gospel  a  tint  which  does  not  come 
prominently  to  the  surface  of  the  synoptic  discourses,  but 
which  a  careful  examination  will  reveal  to  have  been  har- 
moniously blended  throughout  the  texture. 

But  when  all  possible  allowance  has 
Still  a  Subjective  ]^qqii  made  on  the  scores  suggested 
Element  Must  .  .  .,,       .,, 

.      All  ^  ^  above,  there  will  still  remain  an  mi- 

ce Allowea.  ' 

pression  of  a  subjective  element  above 
that  which  these  considerations  require.  We  have  also  to 
take  into  account  what  Archdeacon  Watkins  {^Bainpto7i 
Lectures,  p.  426)  calls  ^'  tratislafion,  or,  if  this  term  has 
acquired  too  narrow  a  meaning,  transmutation."  This 
writer  refers  to  a  threefold  "translation:  "  of  language, 
from  Aramaic  into  Greek ;  of  time,  from  the  first  third  of 
the  century  to  its  end — from  youth  to  mature  old  age ; 
and  in  place,  from  Palestine  to  Ephesus.  Indeed,  it  is 
hardly  conceivable  that   the  discourses  appear   word  for 


I02  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

word  as  Jesus  delivered  them,  even  after  making  due  al- 
lowance for  the  receptivity  of  a  memory  cultivated  after 
the  manner  of  Eastern  people.  That  we  have  in  very 
many  cases  the  very  words  of  Jesus  we  cannot  doubt.  But 
that  the  discourses  are  verbatiin  reports  is  incredible.  The 
question   therefore   comes,  What  can 

What  Element  is       ^^^  allowed  to  John  ?     Dr.  Gloag  has 

Johannine  and  ,,        ,      .      .         .        ,,       . 

what  Christie?  "^  hesitation  m  allowing  a  certain 

degree  of  subjectivity  on  the  part  of 
John.  The  thoughts  ....  were  those  of  Jesus,  but 
John  clothed  them  in  his  own  language,"  perhaps  adding 
at  times  his  own  reflections  on  them.  Godet  follows  Wat- 
kins  in  allowing  for  translation  in  language,  and  adds  mod- 
ification on  the  score  of  compression  and  of  the  action  of 
memory.  But  he  denies  the  admission  of  anything  not 
essentially  and  really  Christie. 

Doubtless  a  careful  study  of  the  Johannean  discourses  in 
comparison  with  those  of  the  synoptic  gospels,  and  of  the 
indications  of  genuineness  in  the  interpolation  of  question 
and  answer,  as  well  as  notice  of  the  pertinence  to  the  inci- 
dents which  are  represented  as  giving  rise  to  the  dis- 
courses, will  lead  to  the  concession 
Substantial  Histor-  ^f  substantial  historicity  to  the  Jo- 
icity  of  Johannine        ,  .  , .  rr^i         i         , 

Discourses.  hannine     discourses.      Though     the 

form   be   new,    the    thought   is    not 
John's  but  his  Teacher's. 

As  Dr.  Sanday  has  put  it  (^Expositor,  April,  1892),  ^' A 
mind  like  St.  John's  was  not  a  sheet  of  white  paper,  on 
which  impressions  once  made  remained  as  they  were :  it 
must  needs  impart  to  them  some  infusion  of  its  own  sub- 
stance ;  and  if  there  is  something  of  masterfulness  in  the 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  I03 

process,  who  had  a  better  right,  or  who  was  more  likely  to 
exercise  this  freedom,  than  the  last  surviving  apostle,  who 
had  himself  lain  upon  the  bosom  of  the  Lord  ?  "  Yet  one 
suggestion  more  will  be  of  weight  to  some :  the  Spirit's  in- 
fluence in  recalling  to  John's  mind  what  otherwise  might 
have  been  forgotten. 

The   two   most    important    objections 

wo     u      er  ^^^^^  uro:ed  a^rainst  the  fourth  erospel  are, 

Objections.  i         / 

to  quote  Dr.  Sanday  {^Expositor,  Janu- 
ary, 1892),  {i)  ''That  there  is  a  deep-seated  difference 
respecting  the  whole  course  of  the  ministry  of  Christ," 
and  (2)  "That  the  fourth  gospel  gives  us  a  portrait  of 
Christ  which  is  all  divinity."  The  first  point  is  that  while 
in  Mark  and  the  other  synoptists  Christ  did  not  come  for- 
ward with  his  claim  to  be  the  Messiah  till  somewhat  late  in 
his  ministry,  in  the  fourth  gospel  his  claim  to  the  Messiah- 
ship  marks  one  of  his  first  acts.  The  two  pictures,  it  is 
claimed,  are  mutually  exclusive.  If  the  synoptic  version 
is  true,  the  Johannean  is  not,  and  therefore  could  not  have 
been  told  by  an  apostle. 

The  answer  to  this  is  that  even  if  the 

Answer:  .  ^  ..1  i     •         j 

premises  are  true,  the  conclusion  does 
A  non  sequitur.      ^  ' 

not  follow.  The  phenomena  presented 
in  John,  were  they  as  asserted,  can  easily  be  accounted  for 
on  the  hypothesis  of  what  Dr.  Sanday  calls  the  "fore- 
shortening" of  memory,  the  difficulty  of  maintaining 
after  the  lapse  of  years  an  exact  sense  of  the  temporal  con- 
secution of  events  and  their  results  or  causes.  There  is  a 
tendency  to  displace  happenings  and  deductions  from 
them,  to  write  with  anticipation  of  events  because  of  the 
insight  ex  post  facto  into  the  consequences  of  those  events. 


I04  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

There  need  be  nothing  essentially  unhistorical  in  this,  so 
that  the  conclusion  that  John  did  not  write  the  gospel  as- 
cribed to  him  does  not  follow. 

But  it  is  possible  to  go  back  of  this 
Premises  not  True.      ^^^^  ^^^^^^   ^^^^^   ^^^    ^^^^^  ^^^    ^^^  ^^ 

represented.  The  statement  of  the  opponents  is,  that 
while  Christ  in  the  synoptics  appeared  certain  of  his  mis- 
sion from  the  beginning,  he  only  urged  his  Messiahship  at 
a  later  period ;  that  the  disciples  are  represented  as  acting 
in  accordance  with  this  course  of  events,  Peter's  con- 
fession marking  the  first  breaking  of  the  light  upon  the 
disciples'  minds ;  that  even  John  the  Baptist  does  not 
know  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  but  from  prison  sends  to  ask 
whether  Jesus  were  the  Christ.  Against  this  it  is  asserted 
that  in  John  the  cleansing  of  the  temple  implies  a  claim 
on  the  part  of  Jesus,  and  the  recognition  of  that  claim  on 
the  part  of  the  people,  to  be  the  Messiah ;  that  from  the 
first  the  disciples  acknowledged  him  as  such;  and  that 
John  the  Baptist  from  the  beginning  declared  to  the  world 
the  Messiahship  of  Jesus.  On  this  we  have  to  remark  that 
it  is  difficult  to  detach  one's  self  from  the 

Ex  post  facto         •       -r  r    ^^  •  J 

^  .  siernincance   of  thmgs  and   names   as  we 

Reasoning".  °  ° 

know  them  af  the  presetit.  We  are  apt, 
for  instance,  to  read  into  the  word  '' Messiah"  all  that 
Paul  and  John  and  nineteen  centuries  have  taught  us  is 
wrapped  up  in  that  word.  But  the  Jews  did  not  see  in  it 
what  we  do.  Dr.  Sanday  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that 
there  were  a  score  of  Messiahs  between  the  death  of  Herod 
and  the  Jewish  war. 

Hence  it  does  not  follow  that  when  Andrew  said,  "  We 
have  found  the  Messiah,"  that  he  perceived  in  that  title  all 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  I05 

that  John  knew  to  be  contained  therein  at  the  time  that  he 
wrote.     Again,  even  in  inspired  persons  it  is  necessary  to 
make  allowances  for  fluctuations  in  faith  (remember  Eli- 
jah !),  hence  there   is  nothing  beyond  reason  in  the  Bap- 
tist's sending  to  know  Jesus'  claims  to  the  Messiahship  after 
Jtjhn  himself  had  proclaimed  him.     And  in  the  Johannean 
representation  of  the  Baptist's  preaching,  the  additional 
feature,  '*  Behold  the  Lamb  of  God,"  adds  nothing  essen- 
tial to  what  he  says  in  the  synoptists.    Likewise  the  Johan- 
nean gospel  makes  it  evident  that  our  Lord  quite  late  in  his 
ministry  had  not  clearly  revealed  himself,  at  least  to  the 
understanding  of  the  people,  as  the  Christ,  since  (John  x. 
24)  the  people  ask,   ''How  long  dost  thou  hold  us  in  sus- 
pense ?    If  thou  art  the  Christ,  tell  us  plainly. ' '     So  that  the 
Johannean  gospel  in  reality  presents  Jesus  as  the  Messiah 
with  *'  as  unequivocal  signs  of  reserve  "  (Dr.  Sanday)  as  do 
the  synoptics.     Lideed,  to  urge  to  its  full  the  objection  of 
a  progressive  development  of  this  Messianic  idea  in  the  first 
three  gospels  requires  us  to  drop  out  as  unhistorical  the  first 
two  chapters  of  Matthew  and  Luke,  which  contradict  "  the 
progressive  and  developing  claims  "  of  Jesus  to  be  the  Mes- 
siah.    It  is  only  by  ignoring  the  "  signs  of  reserve  "  in  the 
fourth  gospel  and  by  emphasizi  ng  such  notes  as  Andrew's 
remark  to  his  brother,  and  by  following  the  reverse  opera- 
tion in  the  synoptics,  that  we  get  a  delusive  contrariety 
which  disappears  when  submitted  to  unbiased  examination. 

The  other  principal  objection  of 
Second  Objection,  ^yhich  we  have  made  mention  deals  with 
cC-tt^*^''''^  °^  ^^^  prominence  given  in  the  fourth  gos- 

pel to  the  preexistence  of  Christ  as  the 
Logos  and  his  consequent  divinity  for  which,  it  is  asserted, 


Io6  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM, 

there  is  almost  nothing  in  the  other  three.     But  in  the 
synoptics   Christ   forgives   sins,  which 
nswer  mp  le    m     ^^^^  -r^^^^    acknowledge  is  an  attribute 
the  Synoptics.  ^  ^    ,     .  ,  • 

of  God  alone;   his  second  coming  as 

judge  is  no  less  clearly  taught ;  he  "  there  legislates  for 
his  Church,  there  claims  the  devotion  of  his  disciples;  .... 
there  too  the  Son  is  also  Lord,  there  too  he  promises  to 
dwell  like  the  Shekinah  among  his  people  .  .  .  .  "  (Dr. 
Sanday).  The  idea  is  by  no  means  so  prominent  in  the 
synoptics,  for  it  was  an  immediate  consequence  of  the 
Logos  doctrine  in  John,  and  to  develop  it  was  a  part  of 
the  polemic  plan  of  his  book.  But  as  a  ground  idea,  it  is 
sufficiently  clear  in  the  first  three  gospels  to  those  "  that 
have  eyes  to  see."  The  synoptists  presuppose  the  Lord's 
divinity. 

The  preceding  are  the  principal  objections  which  are 
now  urged  against  the  John  gospel.  If  they  are  answered, 
but  little  further  can  be  laid  against  its  historicity  or 
genuineness. 

Some  minor  alleged  inconsistencies  or  omissions  may  be 
mentioned  here.  For  instance,  that  the  scene  of  the 
activity  of  Jesus  and  the  events  described  differ  in  the  two 
accounts.  To  which  it  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  refer  to 
the  supplementary  character  of  John's  gospel,  to  remem- 
ber that  both  the  synoptic  accounts  and  the  Johannine  are 
but  selections,  and  that  the  synoptic  accounts  admit  of 
being  dove-tailed  with  the  Johannine,  while  the  Johannine 
representation  assumes  certain  events  definitely  described 
by  the  synoptists.  Thus  v/hile  John  gives  no  account  of 
the  baptism,  he  yet  says,  ^'I  saw  the  Spirit  descend  like  a 
dove,"  etc.,  which  evidently  presupposes  the  baptism.     If 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  *07 

an  argument  is  raised  against  the  historic  verity  of  the 
gospel  because  the  account  of  the  raising  of  Lazarus  is  not 
given  by  the  other  three  evangelists,  what  must  be  said  of 
the  story  of  the  raising  of  the  son  of  the  wido\Y  of  Nain, 
which  is  told  only  by  Luke  ? 

The  argument  from  the  apparent  difference  of  one  day 
in  placing  our  Lord's  eating  of  the  Passover  and  suffering 
death  is  now  no  longer  pressed,  as  the  arguments  on  both 
sides  are  quite  evenly  balanced.  The  same  may  be  said 
regarding  the  difference  in  reckoning  the  hours  of  the  day 
of  our  Lord's  crucifixion. 

We  have  then  as  the  result  of  our  studies  the  establish- 
ment of  the  all  but  universal  tradition  of  the  Church  that 
the  apostle  John  was  the  author  of  the  last  of  our  gospels. 
That  this  will  be  immediately  and  universally  accepted  is 
too  much  to  expect.     But  that  the  flank  of  the  negative 
position  has  been  turned  is  too  evident  to  need  even  state- 
ment.    From  date  to  date   the  critics  have  been   forced 
back  only  to  take  new  positions,  until  about  all  that  they 
have  contended  for  has  been  proved  impossible.     That  we 
shall  soon  have  a  practical  consensus  seems  most  probable. 
The    new   finds   in    apostolic    literature    strengthen    the 
defenders  and  bring  no   new  material  to  the  assailants. 
The  inevitable  result  of  a  reinforcement  of  one  side  only  is 
the  ultimate  victory  of  that  side.     We  believe  that  victory 
is    not    far    distant.      Meanwhile      ''the    fourth     gospel 
continues  and   will   continue    to   shine,    like   the  sun    in 
heaven,  its  own    best   evidence,    and   will   shine   all   the 
brighter  when   the  clouds,   great   and   small,   shall   have 
passed  away  "  (Schaff,  Hist.  Chr.  Church,  i,  724). 


Selected  Bibliography  of  the  Johan- 
NEAN  Problem. 


Bibliographies. 


Generally,  at  the  end  of  the  articles  in  the  Cyclopaedias.     Best  is  in 
Smith's  Bible  Dictionary,  article  jfohii.  Gospel  of. 

Ellicott,  C.  J.  In  his  New  Testament  Commentary  for  English 
Readers,     i,  381. 

Gregory,  Caspar  Rene.  In  Luthardt's  St.  John  the  Author  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel.     Edinb.,  1875,  PP-  283-360. 

Hurst,  John  F.  Literature  of  Theology.  N.Y.,  1895.  (^^^^  "  Johan- 
nean  Problem"  in  Index.) 

Reuss,  E.  W.  E.  History  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament.    Bost.,  1884,  i,  233-236. 

ScHAFF,  P.     Church  History.     N.  Y.,  1882,  i,  408-410. 

SONNENSCHEIN,  W.  S.  The  Best  Books.  Lond.  and  Bost.,  1891. 
Reader's  Guide  to  Contemporary  Literature.  Lond.  and  N.Y., 
1895. 

Vincent,  M.  R.  Students'  New  Testament  Handbook.  N.Y.,  1893, 
pp.  61-68.     Very  useful. 

108 


THE  JOHANNEAN  PROBLEM.  109 

Dictionaries. 

Smith,  William,  and  Fullkr,  J.  M.  Dictionary  of  the  Bible. 
Second  Ed.,  Lond.,  1893.  Articles  BasiliJes,  Gospels y  and 
Johu,  Gospel  of.     (Evangelical  and  apologetic.) 

Encyclopaedia  Britannica.  Ninth  Ed.,  Lond.,  1879.  Article  Gospels. 
(By  Dr.  E.  A.  Abbott,  negative,  acute  and  antagonistic  to  tradi- 
tional authorship.) 

McClintock  and  Strong.  N.  Y.  Articles  Gospels  and  John,  Gos- 
pel of.     (Able,  defend  Johannine  authorship.) 

Schaff-Herzog.  New  Ed.,  N.  Y.,  1890.  Articles  Gospels  and 
yoh7t  the  Apostle. 

In  Works  on  the  Canon. 

Charteris,  A.  H.     Canonicity.     Edinb.,  1880,  pp.  167-195. 

Reuss,  E.  W.  E.  History  of  the  Sacred  Scriptures  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament.    Bost.,  1SS4,  i,  226-236. 

Westcott,  B.  F.  Canon  of  the  New  Testament.  Second  Ed., 
Eond.,  1S66.     (See  particularly  Chap,  iv.) 

In  Introductions. 

Bleek,  F.  An  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament.  Edinb.,  1869,  i, 
316-333.     (Necessarily  behind  the  times.) 

Davidson,  Samuel.  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament.  Third 
Ed.,  Lond.,  1894.  In  Second  Ed.,  see  Vol.  ii,  pp.  326-423. 
(Davidson  is  the  foremost  English  exponent  of  the  negative 
school.) 

Gloag,  p.  J.  Introduction  to  the  Johannine  Writings.  Lond.,  1891, 
pp.  94-214. 

Salmon,  George.  Historical  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament. 
Second  Ed.,  Lond.,  1886,  pp.  249-365. 


no  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

Weiss,  B.  Manual  of  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament.  N.  Y., 
1889,  ii,  386-401. 

Westcott,  B.  F.  An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  Gospels.  New 
Ed.,  Lond.,  1875,  PP*  249-272.     (Scholarly,  most  valuable.) 

Treatises. 

Abbot,  Ezra.  Authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  Unitarian  Re- 
view, Feb.,  Mar.,  June,  1880. 

Peabody,  a.  p.  Internal  Tokens  of  the  Authorship  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel. 

LiGHTFOOT,  J.  B.  Internal  Evidence  for  the  Authenticity  of  St. 
John's  Gospel.     Expositor,  Jan.,  Feb.,  Mar.,  1890. 

These  three  essays  of  Abbot,  Peabody,  and   Lightfoot  were 
reprinted  in  one  volume,  N.  Y.,  1891. 

Arnold,  Matthew.  God  and  the  Bible.  Lond.,  1875.  (Several 
chapters  deal  with  the  Fourth  Gospel.) 

Cone,  O.  Gospel  Criticism  and  Historical  Christianity.  (Prof.  Cone 
is  a  Unitarian.  His  standpoint  is  adverse  to  the  Johannine 
authorship. ) 

Ev ANSON,  E.  Dissonance  of  the  Four  Generally  Received  Evange- 
lists. Ipswich,  1792.  (The  first  work  in  English  to  attack  seri- 
ously the  Johannine  authorship.) 

Fisher,  G.  P.  Supernatural  Origin  of  Christianity.  New  Ed.,N.  Y., 
1870,  pp.  33-152.  The  Beginnings  of  Christianity.  N.  Y.,  1877, 
pp.  320-362. 

Gloag,  p.  Introduction  to  the  Johannine  Writings.  Lond.  and 
N  Y.,  1891. 

Griffith,  T.  The  Gospel  of  the  Divine  Life :  A  Study  of  the  Fourth 
Evangelist.     Lond.,  1881. 


THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM.  I II 

HuTTON,  R.  li.  The  Historical  Problems  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  In 
Essays,  Theological  and  Literary.     Lond.,  1S71,  i,  144-226. 

Ladd,  G.  T.    The  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture.     N.  Y.,  1883,  i,  550- 

573- 

Leathes,  S,  Witness  of  John  to  Christ.  Lond.,  1870,  Appendix 
on  Authenticity. 

LuTHARDT,  C.  E.  St.  John  the  Author  of  the  Fourth  GospeL 
Edinb.,  1875.     New  Ed.,  1885. 

McClellan,  J.  P).     The  Four  Gospels.     Lond.,  1875. 

Mackay,  R.  W.  The  Tubingen  School  and  Its  Antecedents.  Lond., 
1863,  pp.  258-311. 

Mansel,  H.  L.  The  Gnostic  Heresies  of  the  First  and  Second  Cen- 
turies.    Lond.,  1875,  PP-  64-78,  1 10-138. 

Martineau,  James.  The  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion.  Lond., 
1890,  pp.  189-243.     (Negative  in  its  conclusions.) 

Norton,  A,  Genuineness  of  the  Gospels.  Cambridge,  Mass.  Sec- 
ond Ed.,  1846. 

Orr,  James.     The  Authenticity  of  St.  John's  Gospel.     Lond.,  1870. 

Pressense,  E.  de.  Early  Years  of  Christianity.  The  Apostolic  Era. 
N.  Y.,  1870,  pp.  509-512. 

Priestley,  Joseph.  Letters  to  a  Young  Man,  Part  II.  Lond.,  1793. 
(Written  as  an  answer  to  E.  Evanson's  "  Dissonance.") 

Row,  C.  A.  Jesus  of  the  Evangelists:  His  Historical  Character  Vin- 
dicated.    Lond,,  1868,  pp.  223fT,  39 iff. 

Rowland,  D.  The  Evidence  from  Tradition  and  from  the  Fathers 
Applied  in  Support  of  the  Apostolic  Origin  of  t'ne  Fourth  Gospel. 
Lend.,  1869. 


112  THE  JOHANNEAN   PROBLEM. 

Sanday,  William.  Authorship  and  Historical  Character  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel.  Lond.,  1872,  (Still  very  useful.)  The  Gos- 
pels in  the  Second  Century.  Lond.,  1876.  An  Inaugural  Lec- 
ture: The  Study  of  the  New  Testament.     Oxf.,  1883. 

ScHAFF,  P.     Church  History.     N.  Y.,  1882,  i,  701-724. 

Sears,  E.  H.     The  Fourth  Gospel,  the  Heart  of  Christ.     Bost.,  1872. 

Supernatural  Religion.  Sixth  Ed.,  Lond.,  1875,  i^»  251  ff.  (A  sharp 
attack  on  the  Fourth  Gospel.) 

Tayler,  J.  J.  An  Attempt  to  Ascertain  the  Character  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  especially  in  its  Relation  to  the  Three  First.  Second 
Ed.,  Lond.,  1871. 

TiscHENDORF,  C.  Origin  of  the  Four  Gospels,  Bost.,  1867,  pp. 
166-200. 

Wage,  H.     The  Gospel  and  Its  Witnesses.     Lond.,  1883. 

Was  John  the  Author  of  the  Fourth  Gospel?  Lond.,  1868.  (Anony- 
mous.) 

Watkins,  H.  W.  Modern  Criticism  Considered  in  Its  Relation  to 
the  Fourth  Gospel.  Lond.  and  N.  Y.,  1890.  (Exhaustive  sur- 
vey of  the  entire  controversy.) 

In  Commentaries. 

The   Introductions  found  in  the  commentaries  are  often  very  valu- 
able.    The  following  are,  perhaps,  the  best. 

Alford,  Henry.  Greek  Testament.  Fifth  Ed.,  Lend.,  1863,  i, 
5^73- 

Ellicott,  C.  J.  New  Testament  Commentary  for  English  Readers. 
Lond.  and  N.  Y.,  1863,  i,  369-381.     (Very  conservative.) 

Godet,  F.  Commentary  on  the  Gospel  of  St.  John.  Edinb.,  1883. 
(Valuable.) 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  113 

Maurice,  F.  U.     Commentary   on  the  Gospel  of  St.   John.     Lond.. 
1857. 

Meyer,  H.  A.  W.     Commentary  on  the  Gospel  of  St.  John.     Edinb., 
1874,  i,  1-55. 

MiLLiGAN  and  MoULTON  in  Schaffs  Popular  Commentary.     St.  John. 
Lond.  and  N.  V.,  1880,  pp.  i-xxxvi. 

Plummkr,    a.      Cambridge     Greek   Testament.     St.  John.     Lond., 
1882.     (A  good  piece  of  work.) 

Reynolds,  in  Pulpit  Commentary,  Gospel  According  to  St.  John. 
Lond.,  1888.     (Excellent.) 

Sadler,  ^L  F.     Gospel  of  St.  John,  with  Notes,  etc.     Lond.,  1883. 

Westcott,  B.  F.  In  the  Speaker^s  Commentary,  St.  John.  Lond., 
1879;  N.Y.,i88o.     (Perhaps  the  best  of  all.) 

Wordsworth,  Chr.  The  New  Testament  ....  in  the  Original 
Greek,     Lond.,  1856-60,  i,  256-269. 

Review  Articles  of  Importance. 

Abbott,  E.  A.  (In  Encyclopaedia  liritannica,  article  Gospels,  and 
in)  Modern  Review,  1892,  pp  559-5S{>.  7 '6-756,  on  yus/hi's 
Use  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.     (Abbott  belongs  to  negative  school.) 

Arnold,  Matthew.  Review  of  Objections  to  Literature  and  Dogma, 
IV.      Contemporary  Review,  Mar.,  1875. 

Clarke,  J.  F.  The  Fourth  Gospel  and  Its  Author,  in  Christian 
Examiner,  Jan.,  1868. 

Davidson,  S.  Irenceus,  Polycarp,  and  the  Testaments  of  the  Twelve 
Patriarchs  in  Relation  to  the  Fourth  Gosi)el.  Theological  Review^ 
July,  1S70. 


IH  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

Drummond,  James.  Is  Basilides  Quoted  in  the  rhilosophoumena ? 
in  Journal  of  Biblical  Literature,  Vol.  xi,  Pt.  ii,  1892.  (An- 
swers in  affirmative.). 

F.  R.  C.  The  Literary  Character  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  Frazer^s 
Magazine,  Mar.,  1875. 

Fisher,  G.  P.     In  the  Princeton  Review,  July,  1881,  pp.  51-84. 

HiGGiNSON,  Edward.  On  the  Authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
Theological  Review,  Apr.,  1868. 

Lewis,  Tayler.  The  Regula  Fidei,  or  the  Gospel  of  John.  Ajn. 
Presb.  and  Theol.  Rev.,  ii,  46-63  (1864). 

LiGHTFOOT,  J.  B.  (On  Supernatural  Religion^  in  the  Contemporary 
Review,  Jan.,  Aug.,  Oct.,  1875.  (O^^  the  Fourth  Gospel)  in  the 
Expositor,  1890,  pp.  1-21,  81-92,  176-188. 

Martineau,  James.  In  Old  and  New,  Bost.,  July,  Aug.,  1874,  pp. 
47-58,  201-222. 

MiLLiGAN,  William.  The  Easter  Controversies  of  the  Second 
Century  in  Their  Relation  to  the  Gospel  of  St.  John.  Contem- 
porary Review,  Sept.,  1867.  The  Last  Supper  of  the  Lord, 
Aug.,  Nov.,  1868.  The  Gospel  of  St.  John  and  the  Apocalypse, 
Aug.,  Sept.,  187 1.  John  the  Presbyter.  Jourjial  of  Sac.  Lit- 
erature, Oct.,  1867. 

Modern  Criticism  on  St.  John's  Gospel.  Land.  Quarterly  Review^ 
July,  1865. 

Mombert,  J.  I.  Origin  of  the  Gospels,  in  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  Oct., 
1866. 

Neale,  E.  V.  The  Doctrine  of  the  Logos.  Theological  Review, 
Oct.,  1867. 

Niemeyer,  Baur  and  others  on  the  Fourth  Gospel,  in  the  National 
Review,  July,  1857. 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  "5 

On  the  Authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  with  ....  Reference  to 
....  Objections  against  ....  its  Johannine  Origin.  Brit. 
Quart.  Rev.,  Oct.,  1872. 

Recent  Literature  on  the  Gospels.  Br.  and  For.  Evang.  Rev.,  Jan., 
1864. 

Reply  to  Professor  Lightfoot's  Article  on  "Supernatural  Religion." 
(By  author  of  ''Supernatural  Religion.")  Fortnightly  Review, 
Jan.  I,  1875. 

Robinson,  Edward,  The  Alleged  Discrepancy  between  John  and 
the  Other  Evangelists  Respecting  Our  Lord's  Last  Passover. 
Bibliotheca  Sacra,  ii,  405-435  (1845), 

Row,  C.  A.  Historical  Character  of  the  Gospels,  in  Journal  of 
Sacred  Literature,  Oct.,  1865;  July,  1866. 

S.  T.  B.  The  Gospel  Question.  L  The  Fourth  Gospel.  Theological 
Review,  Apr.,  1866. 

Sanday,  William.  The  Fourth  Gospel,  in  Expositor,  Nov.,  Dec, 
1891 ;  Jan.,  Mar.,  Apr.,  May,  1892. 

Stowe,  C.  E.  The  Four  Gospels  as  We  Now  Have  Them  in  the 
New  Testament,  and  the  Hegelian  Assaults  Upon  Them.  Biblio- 
theca Sacra,  viii,  503-524;  ix,  77-108  (1851-52). 

The  Genuineness  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  Br.  and  For.  Evang.  Rev., 
Apr,,  1864. 


INDEX. 


A. 


Abbot,  Ezra,  39,  40,  41,  54,  55,  60 
Adverse  criticism  of  Fourth  Gospel,  14 
Alogi,  10,  57,  58,  63 

not  a  party,  10 

not  impartial,  1 1 
Anicetus,  65 

Antiquity  of  Fourth  Gospel,  18 
Apollonius,  63 
Apologies  of  Justin,  36-44 
Apostleship  of  evangelist,  90 
Appendix  to  Gospel,  58-60 
Arabic  versions  of  Tatian's  Harmony,  31,  32 
Argument  from  silence,  12 
Arnold,  Matthew,  53,  54 
Athenagoras  of  Athens,  29 
Attack  on  Gospel,  lines  of,  15,  16 
Audiences  of  the  discourses,  99 
Authenticity  of  Gospel,  15 

B. 

Basilides,  53,  54 

Basis  of  adverse  criticism,  15,  16 

Baur,  14,  15,  17,  19,  82 

XI6 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  11? 


Bretschneider,  14 
Brusqueness  of  Sadducees,  79 

C. 

Caiaphas,  93 

Canon  of  gospels,  when  closed,  19 

Caspari,  36 

Cerinthus,  58,  63,  70,  76 

Character  sketches,  86,  87 

Characteristics  of  author,  94 

Chronicon  Paschale,  28 

Chronological  exactness  of  Gospel,  80 

Ciasca,  31 

Claudius  Apollinarius,  28 

Cleansing  of  temple,  104 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  19,  20,  41,  64,  100 

Clementine  Homilies,  23,  24 

Conjecture,  relation  of,  to  tradition,  1 1 

Convergence  of  testimony,  96,  97 

Critical  problems,  9 

Criticism  of  Fourth  Gospel,  modern,  14 

Cross,  Mr. ,  83 

Curetonian  Syriac,  33 

Customs,  Jewish,  85 

D 

Date  of  Clementines,  24 
Petrine  Gospel,  46 
Dates  assigned  to  Fourth  Gospel,  15,  17,  69 
Death  of  Christ,  date  of,  16 
Defense  of  Gospel,  lines  of,  17 
Deists  and  the  Gospel,  14 
Detail  in  Gospel,  88 
Dialogue  with  Trypho,  37,  39 
Diatessaron  of  Tatian,  31,  32 
Differences  among  the  Gospels,  16,  98 


Il8  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

Disagreement  of  critics,  12 
Disciples,  inner  circle  of,  92 
Discourses  of  Jesus,  16,  98,  99,  10 1 
Discovery  of  Diatessaron,  31 
Divinity  of  Jesus,  103 
Docetism,  45,  60 
Dogmatic  prepossessions,  10 
Dramatic  vividness,  99 
Dressel,  23 
Drummond,  James,  54 

E. 

Easter,  date  of,  26 

Emanations,  gnostic,  not  in  Gospel,  69 

Ephesus,  residence  of  John  in,  62,  63,  64,  69,  70,  96 

Ephraem  the  Syrian,  31 

Epilogue  of  Gospel,  91,  99 

Epiphanius,  cited,  10,  53,  57,  58 

Episcopate  not  debated  by  Gospel,  69 

Epistle  of  Vienne  and  Lyons,  29 

Eusebius,  20,  26,  45,  63,  64,  65,  100 

Evangelical  instrument,  52,  53 

Eyewitness  wrote  Gospel,  86 

F. 

Fathers'  use  of  Gospel,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  27,  28,  29,  30,  34,39,  40, 

51,  52,  54,63,64,  66 
Forgery  unlikely,  44,  55,  60,  62,  80,  8i 
Foreshortening  of  memory,  103 
Four  gospels  of  Irenaeus,  19 
Fourteenth  Nisan,  27 
Fourth  Gospel  and  synoptics   16 

G. 

Gentile  character  of  audience,  96 
Geography  of  Gospel,  82,  82,  88 


THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM.  HQ 


Gloag,  36,  102 

Gnosticism,  48  ft.,  60,  62,  69,  70,  100 

Godct,  93,  102 

Gospel  criticism,  i 

Gospel  of  Peter,  45,  46,  47 

Graphic  writing,  86 

Greek  language  vs.  Hebrew,  73 

H. 

Harman,  32 

Harmony  of  Tatian,  31,32 

Harnack,  30,  32,  36 

Hebrew  movement  of  Gospel,  73 

use  of,  in  Gospel,  75 
Heinrici,  G.,  53 
Heracleon,  50,  51,  67 
Herod's  temple,  80 
Hippolytus,  48,  52,  53,  54,  58 
Historical  accuracy  of  Gospel,  80 
Historicity  of  Gospel,  15 
Hoyt,  36 


I. 


Ignatius,  65 

"  Illuminationists,"  14 

Inexact  quotations  by  the  Fathers,  21,  41 

Iren.xus,  18,  19,  39,  48,  49,  51,  57,  63,  64,  66,  67,  70 

Iscariot,  75 

J. 

James  one  of  inner  circle,  92 

Jerome,  66,  100 

Jesus,  date  of  death  of,  16 

discourses  of,  16,  98,  99,  10 1 

scene  of  activity  of,  16 

understood  by  author,  91 


I20  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

Jewish  origin  of  Gospel,  73 

sects  known  lo  evangelist,  78 
Jews  and  Samaritans,  79 
Johannean  problem  proper,  9 
Johannean  problem,  the  wider,  9 
John,  Apostle,  belongs  to  inner  circle,  92 

date  of  death  of,  66 

only  possible  author,  91,  94 

residence  of  in  Ephesus,  62,  63,  64,  69,  70,  96 

unnamed  in  Gospel,  92 

wrote  in  old  age,  95 
John  Baptist,  in  the  Gospel,  93 
Josephus,  79,  80,  81 
Judas,  designation  of  as  traitor,  92 
Judases,  the  two,  93 

Justin  Martyr,  30,  36-44,  64,  67,  84,  85 
Justin's  gospels  ours,  2^,  39 

K. 
Keim,  15,  17 


Lagarde,  23 

Lazarus,  raising  of,  78,  107 

Legends  concerning  John,  59,  63,  65,  70 

Liddon,  Canon,  ^^ 

Lightfoot,  Bishop,  69,  74,  78,  79,  80,  Sj 

Literary  style  of  Gospel,  7 1 

Logos  identified  with  God,  100 

incarnated,  29,  30,  40,  105,  106 
Lord's  Supper,  institution  of,  91 
Luthardt,  35 
Lyons  and  Vienne,  epistle  of,  29 


THE    JOHANNEAN    rROHLKM.  1^' 

M. 


McGiffert  on  Gospel  of  Peter,  48 

Manna,  giving  of,  77 

Marcion,  49,  50,  52 

Manila  and  Mary,  87,  89 

Martineau,  46 

Martyrdom  of  James,  92 

Mary  Magdalene,  88 

Matthias,  53 

Melito  of  Sardis,  28 

««  Memoirs  of  the  Apostles,"  37,  38,  39 

Messianic  idea  amonj;  Jews,  104,  105  , 

in  Gospel,  76,  77,  103,  104 
Montanists,  60 
Muratorian  fragment,  ;^^y  34,  67 


N. 


Names  explained,  74 

Negative  criticism  destructive,  94 

evidence,  value  of,  12 
Nicodemus,  87 
Nicolaitans,  70 
Numbers,  use  of,  in  Gospel,  88 


O. 

Old  Latin  version,  33 

Old  Syriac  version,  ^^ 

Old  Testament  known  to  evangelist,  84 

Omission  to  mention  heresies,  69 

Ophites,  56 

Oral  tradition,  99,  100 

Origen,  51 

Origin  of  Logos  doctrine,  42 


122  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 


Palestinian  origin  of  Gospel,  75,  96 

topography,  82 
Papias,  61 

Particles,  paucity  of,  in  Gospel,  74 
Paschal  controversy,  26,  27,  69 
Peabody,  95,  96 
Peratae,  56 
Peter,  at  the  supper,  92 

belongs  to  inner  circle,  92 

Gospel  of,  45,  46,  47 
Petrine  apocrypha,  45 
Pharisees  and  Sadducees,  78 
Philo,  42,  84,  85 

Philosophy  natural  to  author,  100 
Polycarp,  48,  49,  61,  63,  64,  65 
Polycrates  of  Ephesus,  26, 27,  63 
Preexistence  of  Christ,  105 
Priests  and  Sadducees,  78,  79 
Principles  of  criticism,  22 
Problems  of  New  Testament,  9 
Prophet,  the,  of  John,  78 
Ptolem^us,  50,  51,  68 

Q. 

Quotations  of  Fathers,  18,  19,  20,  21,  22,  23,  27,  28,  29,  30,  34,  39,  40, 
51,  52,54,63,64,  66 
inexact,  21 


R. 


Reception  of  the  Gospel  180  A.D.,  25 
Receptivity  of  the  author,  99 
Robinson's  researches,  82 


THE   JOIIANNEAN    PROBLEM.  1 23 

S. 

Sadducees,  78 

Samaritans  and  Jews,  79 

Sanday,  Dr.,  83,  84,  102,  103,  104,  105,  106 

Scarcity  of  extant  second-century  literature,  12 

SchafF,  26,  107 

Schleiermacher,  14 

Schiircr,  82 

Sects  of  Jews,  known  to  evangelist,  78 

Serapion  of  Antioch,45,  46,  48 

Simon,  son  of  Joannes,  75 

Spontaneity  of  detail,  89 

Subjective  element  in  the  Gospel,  10 1 

Suidas,  66 

Supplementary  character  of  (jospel,  100,  106 

Synoptic  gospels,  16,43,  92>  93.  9^>  ^o^,  103,  104,  106 

problem,  9 
Syriac  version,  33 


Tatian,  30-32 

Tayler,  J.  J.,15 

Temple,  cleansing  of,  104 

"Tendency  "  in  Fourth  Gospel,  15 

Tertullian,  43,  49,  50,  51 

Testimony  for  Gospel  deficient,  16,  17 

convergence  of,  96,  97 
Thcophilus  of  Antioch,  20,  21,  22,  67 
Thoma,  A.,  42,  84 
Thomas  Didymus,  93 
Time-marks  in  the  Gospel,  16,  87 
Tischendorf,  19 
Topography  of  gospels,  82,  88 
Tradition,  force  of,  1 1 

nearly  continuous,  10,  94,  107 


^24  THE   JOHANNEAN    PROBLEM. 

Tubingen  school,  14,  23 

Type  of  teaching  of  Gospel,  7 1 

V. 

Valentinians,  51,  52,  53,  67 
Valentinus,  50,  51,  52,  53 
Variation  in  quotations,  21,  41 
Versions,  testimony  of,  to  Gospel,  33 
Vienne  and  Lyons,  epistle  of,  29 

W. 

Watkins,  loi,  102 

Westcott,  Bishop,  33,  40,  91,  93 


Zahn,  30,  31 

Zebedee,  sons  of,  92,  93 

Zeller  on  the  Clementines,  23,  24 


^ 


DATE  DUE 


GAYLORD 


PRINTKO  IN  US.  A. 


